March 17 Gold Country
This is the ride that gets Rig back in the game! Weather is looking great for Friday and Saturday. We'll play Saturday night by ear. I don't want to ride in the rain if I can miss that and Sunday shows rain. Alan has his new truck for this ride, so that will be new for him. Scott gets his motosandjeeps swag today. Yes! Dorian is still on his honeymoon.....but he is camping at least....well, if you call an Airstream camping. Haha. We'll see if he ever reads that. I'm looking forward to doing some exploring on these routes. My hope is to get some history of the gold rush. There's a graveyard in Volcano I'd like to see. I'm also looking forward to our meals. Rig has big plans out of his Jeep. The 392 is hauling a freezer and refrigerator, so cocktails seem to be in order at camp. Plus, as usual, poker is in order. Cheers to all. I'll report out after the ride on how things go.
Tracks/Routes
Friday the 17th
Granite Bay to Indian Grinding Rock Campground
And here is my version as to how it went:
It went great! Day 1 tracks were super fun and all of them worked. I accidentally used my birthday track from last year and took us to Newcastle, which put us at Farmhaus about 20 minutes late, but it was a nice route. Alan beat us there by a bit. Rig couldn't make it due to work, so we just had a great lunch as is. Todd and Merced had to head on home, then we rode the next track to Indian Grinding Rock campground. This was some open fast stuff but then some super slow single lane stuff with a water crossing. Bumpy pavement, but no dirt. We got to camp at about 5, and Rig pulled in ten minutes later. He began to unload the kitch and holy smokes, what a set up he has. You can see it all in the pictures below.
Luca made camp super fun. He is very social and wanted to help everyone and learn new stuff. He took a shine to Dakota too. Had a great dinner then went to look at the Miwok village before dark. It is amazing. But it was getting dark and a couple of us had to set tents up. We got that done and started poker. Really fun but I was having a bad poker night. Sheesh. Only bad part was all of the firewood was too wet, even the stuff we bought, and we just couldn't get a fire going. That was sad. However, it also shows us that no matter what, if we have four wheels, lets bring a propane fire pit as backup.
We also could have used some more booze...such as red wine. It's silly to not have anything and all things with four wheels in the mix. We played poker late, then guys picked away at going to bed. I think it was just Alan and Fo and I to finish the night. Guess who lost most of those hands?
I got cold at night and to be honest did not have a good night's sleep. That makes a difference!
Rig got busy in the kitchen and the next thing you know we have bacon, scrambled eggs, and biscuits with butter and jam. Wowza. The coffee was awesome too. Thanks for that!
Jason got going earlier home than us and we took our sweet Pete time getting started. We parted ways with Scott as he had to head across the valley toward home. I was following google to home and made a turn I didn't expect, but it worked out fine. We found a great burger joint and had a great lunch. We parted with Rig at about 2 or so. We kicked around a slower more scenic route to Chico, but once I hit the i5 I decide to just burn it down and get it over with. Honestly, on the big bikes it isn't so bad. That said, I had a bad driver in front of me on the 5 through downtown Sacramento and I was happy I was paying attention.
Fo and Alan and I stopped in Live Oak for gas and to have an end of the ride beer. Nice that. So we were home in a timely fashion on Saturday. To be honest, I really like knowing I have all Sunday to recover and get stuff done at home.
This is a great one night ride destination I think. We need to do it again but spend time in the town of Volcano. It looked awesome...pubs and restaurants and historic hotels. We just rolled through on our way to camp.
Until the next one boys! Cheers.
PP
