tahoe and donner pass

We had to head to Lake Tahoe while here in CA of course. We had heard how pretty it is, etc. And yep - we heard right. A lot of the shoreline is built up, small villages, homes, etc. However there are a few sections that are still undeveloped tho - yay! These are just a few photos of the beautiful mountain-ringed lake.

We then headed up through Donner Pass. For those of you who may not remember, or do not know: In 1846, a group of pioneers decided to take an unproven trail across the U.S. to California. Due to a number of mishaps and unknown situations, they were unable to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains before snowfall. In order to survive, the people resorted to cannibalism - assumably not killing others, but eating the flesh of those who died from starvation or other natural causes. Relief parties came in from the other side of the mountains when possible to lead the survivors to safety, but they couldn't bring in much food or take all the people at once. It took two months and four relief parties to rescue the entire remaining party. Almost half of the original group died en route.

I've always been intrigued by the pioneers, those who headed west, walking for thousands of miles, looking for a better life. And this particular incident really impacted me - how sad, tragic. Can you imagine going through what they did?! Many of them had gone mad. Newspapers printed articles blaming the travelers of bad conduct. wtf?!

Anyway, since we were so close to the area, we drove up the pass...

and looked over the lake where they lived and died so many years ago.

all that shines is gold

Well, maybe not ALL that shines is gold. But if something in a mine sparkles, it's only fools gold - not the real stuff. I think that's about the biggest thing I learned in this real-life mine tour.

Sutter Gold Mine was a working gold mine, and is trying to become so again. It is estimated (through painstaking research) that there is still a LOT of gold in there. The Mine has been only for tourism for the past four years, and now the company is working on plans to keep the tours and do real mining again.


Unlike what movies portray - most gold mining isn't finding nuggets just lying around, or seeing gold streaks in caves. Most gold is now pulled out of white quartzite - and it's usually not visible to the naked eye. There is this huge process that extracts the gold - and the process only gets like 25% of it. So Sutter Gold Mine is keeping all the leftovers for the day when someone discovers a better way to separate the gold, in hopes that more can be extracted.

This huge vein of quartzite could be worth quite a bit, but it's located in a spot in the mine which is not possible to pull it out without collapsing the mine. Hmmm... guess that wouldn't be worth it.

This shows how a mine shaft would have looked like back in the day. Well - kinda. There wouldn't be those bright lights overhead. Yes, there would be timbers to hopefully hold the walls of the cave up. But there would be one candle for 5 miners, so basically it would have been almost pitch black. And each miner would have had his precious bird with him - if the bird became dizzy or passed out, it was time to run out of that cave - fatal gases were accumulating.

We learned about the different methods of drilling and the types of explosives used over time. The tour was very informative - yay! And our guide is a real miner - he's been working in mines for seven years. His fave part is explosives of course, typical guy. LOL

I had to laugh - even the gal's restroom was decorated to remind visitors where they were.

king's canyon

We finally made it back down to King's Canyon National Park. It's a neat park too, although for me it was a bit of a letdown after Yosemite. Really, tho, can you imagine being disappointed with vistas such as this?!

More big trees. LOL This dude, the General Grant sequoia tree, is the third largest tree in the world. General Sherman, which we previously saw at Sequoia National Park, is the largest tree by volume.

Rather interesting - this sequoia is dead and down, and the inside burned out. Researchers have been unable to determine if the fire burned the inside before or after it died and fell. This tree was used as a camp shelter in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and was even used as a saloon.

Now we started getting to the fun part. We started driving down into the canyon. King's Canyon is supposed to be deeper than the Grand Canyon. So we drive down, and further down, and further yet...

til we reached the bottom. Now that is something you can't do at the Grand Canyon!!

yosemite

I think I have a new favorite national park. omg, Yosemite NP is AMAZING!! It's all here - mountains, cliffs, monoliths, domes, valleys, canyons, waterfalls, rapids, rivers, streams, trees, meadows, wild flowers... And it's all in a rather compact area. However, it seems the word is out that it's a great park, because it can be really busy.

I love this view of Yosemite Valley: El Capitan on the left, Half Dome peeking out in the middle, a waterfall on the right, and lots o' trees.

I am always entranced by water features - I honestly can't tell you which is more interesting to me: water or rock. LOL Upper Yosemite Falls is super tall - combined with Lower Yosemite Falls, it's one of the tallest in the world.

This closeup of a smaller waterfall is cool - love seeing the drops and sprays, etc. Some things about nature just fascinate me; I could sit and watch water flow and splash for hours!

This is a different perspective of Half Dome. People actually climb this sucker - can you believe it?! If you look at the top bulge, near the left side, you can see a series of tiny dark dots going up... those are the cables installed by the park to assist hikers and climbers get up that very vertical slope. wow!

Talking about climbers... as we were tooling along on the bike, Greg pointed out some climbers on a different rock. There are actually two different sets going up - can you see them? Perhaps the following two pictures will help you pinpoint them better in this first picture.

We also saw wildlife again. This time it was a bear!! woohoo!! As Greg said - "that's a traffic stopper." Vehicles were stopping up and down the road to see him. At least this time folks were playing it smart and staying near the road. When we saw a bear last year - some dopey folks were trying to get closer to it to get a better picture. duh...

Now this little critter I think has beautiful fur, but he looks kinda mean in the face. Maybe he's just scared and mistrustful, as well he should be. But I have no clue what he is... can anyone help me?

Talking about wildlife. hahaha And yep, it was chilly, even here in California. Got my chaps on. LOL Yep, they're fringed chaps. You need to see a picture of me in these and my fringed leather jacket - that's biker babe at her finest!

And just to show that I'm not all woosy about cold weather - this little lake is still mostly frozen!!

Holy smokes! I don't think I've EVER seen a sign for that steep of a grade! Usually roads that are considered steep are 6 or 7 percent grade. But it certainly was a fun curvy road - great on the bike! This was the road outside Yosemite, to the north. So if you head this way sometime, consider your roads carefully!

The scenery on that steep winding road north of YNP was fantastic!

home sweet Lodi

Since we were literally driving through Lodi, California, we decided we HAD to stop for a few pictures. Why, you ask?? Well let me tell you... I was born and raised (well, at least raised) in Lodi, Wisconsin. It wasn't until college that I lived anywhere else. Lodi WI is a cute little town, population around 2000, home of Susie the Duck and Tom Wopat (dark haired Luke from the Dukes of Hazzard). It's the kind of town where you know 'most everybody, and everybody knows ALL about everybody else!! Goodness, I thought the gossips knew more about me than I did!

So anyway, we saw this cute historic archway.

And had to laugh at the name of this restaurant - it would be so appropriate in Lodi WI too!

And stopped at a Lodi winery - Oak Ridge Winery. We used to live on Oak Ridge Drive in Wind Lake, WI, so it was just meant to be...

And I saw this mural on a building in town. I'm not sure what a walldog is (perhaps the high school mascot?), but I've loved Wheaties as long as I can remember, and I thought the painting looked great - those ropes really look like they're dangling!

wine-o's

We headed into Napa Valley for some wine-tasting. Not really my thing, but Greg loves his red wines! Our last time in CA we went to Sonoma, so this time we thought we'd goto the more popular wine valley.


These are just a few of the places we stopped for tastings. Most of the Napa wineries charge $10-15 per tasting, and Greg and I didn't feel like spending $20-$30 at each location, so we stopped at a couple local tourist information centers, and we were given numerous buy one, get ones, and even one for two free tastings. woohoo!! I've decided that I prefer the smaller wineries, the more intimate ones. It's more likely that the person you talk to might be the owner, or even just someone who actually knows what's going on with the winery.

Now this was amazing - a castle in Napa Valley. So this was the winery that we decided to tour, rather than just stop for the tasting. The guy who built it wanted it to look and feel as authentic as possible, so he had a lot of the construction materials brought over from Europe. In fact a lot of the brick, iron work, etc., are actually from old castles and other buildings there! This thing is HUGE. It has 8 levels, of which only 4 are above ground. There is a torture chamber with real instruments of torture (the rack, the iron maiden, you name it - they got it) - because what kind of castle would not have a torture chamber?! He even had the castle built in different period styles, just like a real castle would have been - the chapel would be first, then later an addition, then another, etc. Castles were rarely (if ever) built quick enough to be in one style. Anyway, the tour rocked. The four underground floors are pretty much all storage of wine barrels and bottles. WOW - lots of wine!!

another day

another ride through scenic CA. We followed a river up, down and around. We saw beautiful mountains. California really is a diverse amazing state!

I think the best part of this day for me was watching these kayakers. There were three of them, standing on the edge of the rapids. btw - these pictures do NOT do justice to those rapids. They were pretty wild and crazy, with big boulders. You could just see the water being pushed, pulled, sucked everywhere. Anyway, these three dudes were standing on the edge, pointing and talking. You could tell they were discussing how best to get through these rapids. After a while, two of them got in their kayaks and went one at a time through. The third guy opted not to try it and portaged around. As you can see, the first guy did FABulous!

The second guy didn't look quite so graceful, but he also came out of it just fine. The looks on their faces, the triumphant glow, was absolutely outstanding!

Greg and I scoffed at this sign {it says "Bikers Beware Dead Man's Curves" - yeah right - we've been on worse roads.

Bay area

We have been having frig problems in the RV, so we decided to get a new one. Frig, that is! So while the new frig was being installed, we took a short (for us) ride - about 4.5 hours. It was just south of the Bay area, so there were more buildings, cars and people than we prefer while trying to enjoy our time on the bike. But the ride was quite pleasant nonetheless...

We definitely found out where city folk go on weekends... yep - the beach! The beaches closest to the Bay area cities were super crowded, cars stopped in the middle of the road, people walking 1/2-1 mile easily. This particularly beach is big enough that it didn't seem too crowded.