Today was supposed to be a day of riding from point A to point B to position us to ride through Yosemite National Park to Tonopah in one day. We had no expectations…..
Now the routes we choose, are routes that keep us off the Interstates and major areas…today that worked against us a bit as there just too many turns and roads to get to where we were going. To say that we got turned around a couple of times would be an understatement but we are firm believers in no wrong turns just different adventures. One bonus from the turn around is that we rode past the Sonoma Raceway where they hold NASCAR races, so now we know where that is. The downside is that we finally gave up trying to find the route we were looking for and took Interstate 80 for a short distance just to make up time and get us there. It worked.
So back to no expectations…..the routes as I mentioned were to get us from point A to point B. We rode through so many vineyards and passed more than a few wineries that we were familiar with like Michael David and Lodi Wineries. It is a beautiful valley surrounded by golden hills everywhere….and contrary to a popular song, we didn’t get stuck in Lodi but if I did….there was lots of wine.
As we left the vineyards we started noticing these large groves….at first I thought they were olive groves as there seemed to be a lot of olive trees or what I thought were olive trees….they were in fact walnut groves…which meant we were in good company with nuts. We didn’t stop long here as the dogs at the house we stopped in front of seemed to not take to kindly to whatever they thought we were up to. There were a ton of these groves though, everywhere.
As we started to approach the foothills of the Sierras, we were again captivated by the gold in the landscape. The gold fields and hills seemed to stretch for miles which I am sure they did. As we came down into a valley we rode over some really large bridges (one with nothing more than a guardrail). Here we arrived at Tulloch Lake…now two things stood out about this community…..the twisting road around the lake (and I might add high above) as well as the number of really large homes seemingly in the middle of no where.
It wasn’t long after this that we finally came to 120E which would take us to Groveland for the night (I keep calling it Groverland so if you see the error anywhere I apologize….can’t help myself the air is thin up here). …..then we started to climb, switchback after switchback after switchback….in most places no guardrail and we were riding the outside edge…..I don’t think Thelma and Louise would particularly care for these as you could quite easily see what was coming if you went over but couldn’t see what was coming the other way….butt clenching to say the least. Pictures below so that I could put them in extra large format.
We arrived in Groveland, hot and tired as the temps had climbed (just like us) to 30 degrees….the hotel had no elevator as it is a historic building and we were on the 2nd floor. I thought it would be a great way to get our steps in but I am not sure that Mr. J was in full agreement with that one….the real struggle of the day was to find a place to eat. We got more steps in walking up and down the street of this little town only to find a lot of places were closed and the others were busy, didn’t serve full menu or not what we were looking for…we settled on the Iron Door Saloon which is apparently the oldest Salo0n in California.
It is a quaint town with a cowboy feel. Tomorrow we are off to Yosemite!
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