6600 miles. 14 days. 20 states. Temperatures ranging from 110 to 37
Riders : Behram
Days : 6
9/14 Thu - Latesh heading back home and me heading to SJ to meet my boss and couple of friends. Shows about 475 miles/7.5Hrs and will be stopping to meet my cousin in LA. Ride got boring so moved to 101/1 and it was very beautiful. One side of the road you have the sea and the other side is moubtains. Turned out to be more than 500 miles. 9/15 Fri - Met my boss and a few friends in SJ .. they recommended Yosemite soheadd there around 4ish. Yosemite min temp was 50 so had to make sure I had enough to keep warm on the bike. Very pretty ride. Booked a bnb and reached the at 8 to find that owners had already left. So I was in pitch dark, on the mountain, alone, with nowhere to go. Luckily found one bnb that had availability and grabbed on to it. All's well that ends well. Looking forward to Yosemite tour tomorrow and then heading to SLC 9/16 Sat - Woke up by 3, didn't get sleep as usual. No sense in leaving early since I won't be e to enjoy Yosemite. So finished some work and left by 5am. Yosemite is beautiful and you probably wouldn't have seen anything similar before. The valley is surrounded by mountains but they are very close so the feel of this valley is different. There are camps and lodges and everything goes full if you intend on staying inside. Tbh the road from Yosemite towards the other end of Cali is much prettier than the approach from CA. The mountain and valley views are gorgeous and there are loads of biker groups that side. Now comes the tough part. From Yosemite I headed towards SLC and the day before had completely miscalculated the time and distance. The total riding for me that day from hotel to SLC including Yosemite turned out to be 15.5 hours/700miles. It made it worse because there wasn't an interested highway and here's the scarier part - you have two extremely long stretches if 163 miles and 113 miles without any food water or gas or nothing. No kidding! They have a small board that tells you that you won't get gas for next 163 miles. Those roads are like nothing you have seen before. Miles and miles of straight roads going through mountains every 15 miles. OMG! Beauty that I can't describe. Could get boring if you are alone but in a group they would be fun. Also you could be at a constant 80 and above since you won't find too many cars so keep in mind that 163 miles could turn into 200 for your bike as it did for me. Luckily I had a 214 miles display when I hit the 163 mile board. This is also considered one of the most loneliest roads to travel and in fact there are even survival guides on how to get past. I wasnt aware of this until much later : https://loyaltytraveler.boardingarea.com/2011/07/15/even-lonelier-than-the-loneliest-road-in-america/. Once I hit i80 I was pleasantly surprised to see speed limit of 80. Cool ride for 2 hours until SlC. 9/17 Sun - Yesterday's craziness might have caught up and ended up sleeping until 9 am. Still lazing around in bed and now it's 10 already. Still need to tour SLC and then head towards Denver. No way am I attempting to reach Denver tonight. Reached up to an hour from Denver. Ride was beautiful with mountains all through the way. The last hour was cold with temperature dropping sub 40s. Will ride to Denver tomorrow and get bike serviced and tour while bike being serviced. Not sure if I am gonna stay night in Denver or just head towards Kansas City 9/18 Mon - Started when it was 37 outside. Wasn't too bad since soon temperatures hit over 50. Reached Denver and realized and there wasn't much to see from a city perspective. Beauty lies around Denver like red rocks, other hiking and skin places etc. So got bike serviced and left towards Kansas City. Reached around 11pm and stayed the night there. As soon as you pass Denver, the road gets flat and non scenic and boring and the beautiful i70 turns into any other highway. 9/19 Tue - Heading towards Rtp from Kansas City. Turns out that I am heading same direction as a storm. Tried but it's too heavy to continue riding. Stopped at McD waiting for it to pass. Ended at Lexington kY. As you reach luoisville, the surrounding gets greener just like NC. You see more greenery and more trees and more greenery :-). Heading home tomorrow 9/20 - Wed - Lexington KY to RTP. WV and VA are both pretty but nothing special about the ride. Guess i am used to this part :-)