(11) Vancouver, WA to Ely, NV Recap
We’ve made it to the Ely, NV KOA for the night. I’ll catch up on our goings on from the beginning though and end this post here.
The start of the trip was ideal. We stayed at a hotel in Vancouver that was just a couple hundred yards from the storage unit where I had been keeping the bikes since I vacated my apartment. It was super easy to walk over, pick them up, ride back to the hotel and pack before setting off for Glenda’s in Newport.
We took a very back road route to get to Newport. Part of it is the Scapoose to Vernonia road. This is one of my favorite day trip rides when I was living in town. So no need for GPS on this leg. We just headed off under ideal weather and took the long way to Newport. After winding around the mountains we caught Highway 6 into Tillamook. Neil wanted to stop at the Tillamook cheese factory. So we swung in there and picked up cheese curds, jerky, cinnamon almonds and a drink for lunch before taking highway 101 into Newport.
The first order of business was to stop in at the assisted living home where my mom is living for a visit. She was very happy to see Neil although a bit depressed that she wouldn’t see me for the next few months. I have a cell plan that gives me unlimited talk, text and internet all through Central and South America. So I promised that I’d call once a week or so through the trip.
Then it was dinner picked up from Local Ocean restaurant in Newport and some wine with my sister Glenda and her husband Pete. After a good night’s sleep and breakfast it was off to Crater Lake.
Another perfect day for the ride to Crater Lake. We decided not to do the route over McKinzie Pass that I had originally planned on and took a ride down to Waldport and up Highway 34 to Alsea. After a quick stop at Alsea Falls (pics of Neil and I there are in the Gallery) we jumped onto one of the old logging roads, now paved, and headed to Alpine. My parents grew up in Alpine and my father has a marker in the Alpine cemetery along with several other Rhodes family members. It was nice to be able to take Neil to see it. He was too young to remember my dad before he passed away.
The rest of the ride to Crater Lake was fine and nice arriving about 3:00pm. That left plenty of time to drive around the rim and take the pics that are in the Gallery section. Our abode for the night was the tent in the Mazama campground. I’ve stayed there before back in 2018 when I was on my solo bike trip and really liked it. That time I had cooking gear with me and ate at my tent. We aren’t carrying any cooking equipment on this trip and I knew that Mazama had a little restaurant. So we caught dinner there. We were looking for a beer in the campground store but couldn’t find anything we liked to settled on a can of pino gregio wine. LOL, I’ve never had wine in a can before! Not the best in the world but perfectly acceptable to us after a day’s riding.
Day 3 saw us off to the little settlement of Old Station, CA just a few miles outside of Lassen Volcanic National Park. This was our warmest day of riding so far. Our camp spot was right on the creek at Hat Creek RV Park. So we were able to use the creek as our beer cooler for the afternoon. Unfortunately we got to the camp store 5 minutes after it closed and had to ride a couple miles back to the town gas station store to pick up some sandwiches for dinner. Food selection has been interesting so far when we can’t cook for ourselves.
As I said, this was a pretty warm day and I started to notice that the bikes seemed to be running hotter than I expected. One of the modifications I had done to our bikes was a change to the cooling system and I was concerned that something was amiss. We were both routinely seeing engine temps of between 195 and 210 F during normal riding. If we sat still idling I saw mine go as high as 228. I’ve only had engine temperature gauges that showed a needle going between cold and hot on a dial and never knew what temperatures that actually equated too but since some of the temps I was seeing were above the boiling point of water (212 F) I was a bit worried. However, the bikes seemed to be running fine and there was always coolant in the expansion tank. So I just decided to keep an eye on it.
Day 4 took us through Lassen first thing in the morning. We took a few pictures there, but primarily had our Go Pros on. We need some time in a hotel to pull that off the cameras and edit it so we can post videos of our run through the park. After that it was off to a hotel night in Reno. Unfortunately, I was navigating our route from memory and sent us on a 30 mile round trip “detour”. Fortunately it was some of the best riding through a river canyon and we had fun doing it both directions! It only put us into Reno about an hour later than I had expected. It was nice to have a hotel night after two camping nights in a row.
The bikes still seemed to be running hot to me. So this morning I sent an email off to the maker of the coolant system modification I had installed. He gave me a very detailed response and assured me that the temps I’m seeing are normal. I feel better having confirmed that now!
Today it was Reno to Ely Nevada. Our longest day in the saddle so far at just a bit less than 400 miles. More navigational issues today. Thankfully, not my fault this time. I plugged the KOA campground into the GPS this morning and off we went. I made this run 4 years ago and knew how to get here but I decided to let Flo (John’s name for the GPS voice) direct us. I said to Neil multiple times that the route we were on seemed weird but we kept following it.
By the way, Neil and I are in communication while riding using helmet to helmet intercoms. Anyway during one stop I finally decided to take a look at how the GPS was routing us. It was sending us south from Reno to Tonopah and then up to Ely rather than just out Highway 50 like normal. After that discovery I decided to just take a connector road and get back on Hwy 50 and go in the way I knew. Another hour or so of lost time, but we made it into Ely around 6:00. We stopped immediately at a Mexican restaurant and had what was I believe the biggest burrito I’ve ever seen. I only got through half of it and Neil could only manage about two thirds of it. Both the burrito and margarita were fantastic though. And here we are now, just down the road at the KOA campground. The tent is up, sleeping bags down and all set for the night.
I have found that my sleeping pad I used 4 years ago isn’t as comfortable as it used to be. I’m sure it’s the fact that the pad is older and not that I might be more sensitive to it than I was! Anyway, while we were riding though a town in California we stopped at a sporting goods store we saw and I picked up a new sleeping pad. It wasn’t any better than my old one. However, the two placed on top of each other are quite comfy!
That catches us up to now. I’m sitting under the light at the campground office writing this. It’s dark now and 9:00pm. Bed time mow. We are off to Torrey, UT tomorrow. I’ll probably write another post after our riding class this weekend.
