Monthly Archives: May 2018

After a couple of days of lake living, it was off to Laughlin, NV.  It’s a town tucked into the lower corner of Nevada right on the Colorado River.  On the other side of the river is Bullhead City, Arizona.  One option I had to get there was to take a bit of a side detour and go to Oatman, AZ.  It’s known as a “ghost town”, which I guess it was at one point, but now this little place is inhabited buy some resident shopkeepers and donkeys that roam the streets.  So for a ghost town, it’s a fairly busy place. I read somewhere that about 500,000 pass through here each year.  It’s one of those places where you again drive through a lot of desert and scrub areas and can’t help but wonder how someone decided to settle here.  (more…)

Checking out the map my thought was to head to Laughlin, NV from my campsite in Quartzite.  I have noticed Lake Havasu on the map many times and it’s in fairly large type so it must be sizable for the area.  I would pass through there on my way so I planned take a little extra time to look around.  Lake Havasu is part of the Colarado River system and since there’s water, was guessing that it probably has some green areas in this mostly desert environment.  I came up from the south and on approach the whole view started changing.  There were a lot of trailered boats being towed, nice looking camp grounds and even a plush green golf course, so plenty of signs that there must be a whole lot of water available.  After riding a while through scrubby desert land you get to a place like this and it tends to be mentally refreshing.  (more…)

It has been about a month now that I’ve been on a central and southern California road trip that also skirted into Nevada.  It was a good trip and now I was heading back into Arizona.  The two most obvious things I noticed when getting to AZ were that the gas prices looked to be averaging around $.50 to $1.00 a gallon less and the increase in temperature.  Two days ago when I was on the Harley riding the coast, I could have used some heavier riding gear, it was brisk and windy.  Now when crossing the desert nearing Yuma, the temps got as high as 106 degrees at one point.  Yes, I know, it’s a dry heat! (more…)

It’s May but still a little brisk for sleeping a tent camper this far north so decided to saddle up, go over to the California coast and turn south.  After leaving the Lake Tahoe area I headed towards Sacramento.  It was a Sunday, which is a great time to drive through a state capital and look around.  Always a better traffic situation.  This was really a pit stop to say that I’ve been to Sacramento and use the library.  Rule of thumb, big city libraries have a much more interesting bunch of patrons then smaller towns and it was no different here.  Some emails done, some bills paid via WiFi and I was off again.  Still wasn’t sure where to go for the night so I looked on freecampsites.net.  If I went straight south I was a couple of hours away from a Walmart that allowed camping and there wasn’t much else.  I wanted to clean up the camper a bit and secure the Harley with new stronger straps so a parking lot was a good stop for this.  (more…)

First a tip of the hat to Carson City, NV.  When originally wanting to stop at Lake Tahoe it was just too cold so I ended up driving about 20 miles more and downhill several thousand feet to Carson City.  Just for some perspective, when you make the final decent to Carson City, it is down a hill that is about 6 miles long, a nice coast.  For the guy that I passed a couple of days later going up it on a bicycle and who had calves that resembled fire hydrants, it seemed like a lot of work.  Ah the Yin and Yang of life!  Anyway, geography not being one of my strong suits I didn’t remember that it is actually the capital of Nevada until reading the sign that said so on the route into town.  Was planning on staying a day maybe two but ended up there for a full week.  Carson City itself was pleasant enough, but if that was the only destination in the area I would have been gone quickly.  However it is a excellent jumping off spot for Lake Tahoe, Virginia City, Reno, Gardener, (possibly the wrong) Tonapah, plus the general area is teeming with good roads to ride a motorcycle on and great scenery.  (more…)

After a gourmet camper breakfast, I started this trip traveling north from Yosemite National Park and took Rt 49 headed to Lake Tahoe.  About half way there was a sign that said road closed.  Thinking that it’s a Saturday and it’s Rt 49, which is the main route to go north around here, figured it’s probably signage left over from the work week.  Turns out in a few miles I ran into a blocked road and a guy in a hard hat saying they were paving today so yes the road is really closed. He gave me detour directions that sounded simple enough, but he never told me how far this was going to be.  It was a beautiful two+ hour ride through cow country, past lakes, over dams, a couple of forks in the road where I needed to flip a coin to decide left or right and scenery that was really incredible.  It wasn’t like I had a schedule to adhere to, but it was a long detour. 

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Since I have the truck, camper and motorcycle triple threat, it is a great way to see the national parks.  This trip is to southern and central California and I am going in late April to beat the summer crush.  Some high altitude roads are still closed because of snow, but most park roads seem to be open now.  As I’ve done in the past I take the camper and trailer the Harley, then go find a spot somewhere near or in a national park. Then I throw out the anchor from the truck and use the bike to get around the parks and surrounding area for a couple of days at each stop.  For me not only is it a lot more fun going through the parks on two wheels, but it’s also a big gas saver.  Instead of getting around 10 or 12 miles to a gallon of gas with the whole caravan, I can ride around on the Harley at approximately 40 miles to the gallon.  Plus on the motorcycle I find experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and usually twisty mountain roads are amplified. (more…)