On our first Memorial Day ride, Matt and I found ourselves riding up the coast from San Francisco then over to Redding on the amazing CA36, then through snow tunnels to Mt. Lassen, into the valley for a Burning Man pre-party then over and down the Sierras ending up somewhere near Fresno. Last year, Andrea came for the first time and we explored the Southern Sierras and ended up spending an extra day at Lake Isabella due to a bad tire. This year, since Andrea and I now live in Boise and Matt is still in San Francisco, we decided to meet up somewhere around Reno then ride up into Oregon and maybe hit Crater Lake. Andrea and I left Thursday night with her and the dog in the car and me on the bike for the 2 hour trip to my parents house to spend the night and drop the dog off for the weekend. My parents are currently volunteering as caretakers for a nature preserve run by The Nature Conservancy at Thousand Springs, Idaho. It’s about 2 hours southeast of Boise on the Snake River.

Thousand Springs is unique because it is here where the Lost River of Idaho re-emerges from the ground after travelling for 300 miles underground where it falls out of the volcanic basalt cliffs into the Snake River. The result of this are a bunch of large waterfalls coming, not from on top of the cliffs, but directly out of them. It’s really a cool place. The preserve itself is located on an island that is a former dairy homesteaded and run by Minnie Miller. The historic buildings are all intact and can be toured. There’s an Idaho Power turbine plant across the river where they’re using the springs as a power source.

We woke up Friday morning to much different weather than we had expected. An untimely cold front was pushing in from Alaska which dropped the temperatures more than 10 degrees and brought with it a good 10 knot wind. We set off for Elko, NV via ID51 that runs from Mountain Home down to Elko. It changes its name to NV225 when you hit the state line. It was kinda cold riding, but not too bad. We rode through a couple great canyons near the NV/ID line up to the Wild Horse Reservoir.

We hit I-80 in Elko and fought a 10-20 knot headwind all the way to Winnamucca. There was a big Harley convention in Winnamucca called “Runnamucca” which apparently results in bar fights and general disorder for the hole town while it is happening. At Winnamucca, I-80 turns southwest, which turned our 10-20 knot headwind into a 10-20 knot crosswind. Fun!!! We had to stop every 50 miles or so because the wind was killing us. Our original goal was to make it just past Gerlach, NV in the Black Rock Desert. It is here where Burning Man is held every year. We wanted to see the Playa surface without the city and maybe camp out on the open expanse. Since the wind was slowing us down so much, we decided instead to try to make it to Pyramid Lake which is 70 miles south of Gerlach.

We made it to Pyramid Lake and bought a tribal permit for $9. The permit allows you to camp anywhere along the lake. There aren’t really developed camp grounds, you just find a place you like and setup your tent. It’s pretty nice.

After some yahoos invaded our campsite around 10 pm, we decided that we really didn’t want to listen to their rap/country music or their obnoxious kids, so we picked up our stuff and I shuttled it over to a new spot with the motorcycle. Then Andrea and I carried the tent the 500 ft. or so to the new spot where we had a much more peaceful camp.

Matt showed up around 11. We heard the rumbling of his Two Bros about a mile away and went and flagged him down. As we were standing around the campfire, we started feeling the rain drops. Sometime during the night, we woke up to rain coming down on the tent. None of us wanted to get our of our sleeping bags in the morning. There was snow on the mountains all around us and the wind was gusty. We decided to try our luck at getting to Gerlach and if we couldn’t, we head for Reno and go play some nickel slots and wait out the storm.

We got about 10 miles from our camp site and started heading north toward Gerlach. We almost immediately got hit by a huge crosswind gust. Matt pulled over and we abandoned the idea of getting to Gerlach. We headed back over the pass to Sparks/Reno where we had lunch then tried to find a motel room. There were no rooms in all of Reno. Luckily, Matt called a friend who has a place near Tahoe City and he just happened to be there so we headed to Tahoe. As we were heading south on US395 out of Reno, I looked up at Mt. Rose where I knew the pass was. Mt. Rose was not there. Instead a gigantic black cloud stood in it’s place. All I could think about was riding in the snow from then on. We hit the snow level at about 6500 ft. and luckily it wasn’t sticking to the road. We took it easy up to the top of the pass then down into Tahoe. The snow was sticking to our helmets and I had to leave the vents open to keep my faceshield from fogging up, which made my face freeze. We made it down into Tahoe, where it was still snowing along the lake and got to Mike’s place where Matt made up some hot chocolate.

We crashed with Mike and Wei that night and had some sushi and saw X-Men 3 at Incline Village. The next morning was clear, but cool so we decided to head north on CA89 up the east side of the northern Sierras with the goal of getting to Oregon and camping by Goose Lake on the CA/OR border.

All of the Sierra valleys were beautiful and green. The weather stayed nice but still cool, around 50 or so, and we hit a few of the back roads on the way north.

We finally made our way up to Goose Lake around 7 in the evening. We found the back road that leads along the west side of the lake. We were kind of suprised when it turned into a dyke and we ended up riding along the dyke. There’s wildlife everwhere. Ducks, eagles, deer, everything. We found a nice spot that we thought was NFS land and made a camp along the lake. This was the nicest place I’ve camped in a while. There was no one there; no cars, no people…just the beautiful lake and a great camp spot.

In the morning we headed into Lakeview, OR for breakfast. After we ate, Matt took a left and headed back to San Francisco. We kept going straight and headed up toward Burns, OR before heading east back to Boise. The trip back was mostly straight, but there’s some great scenery in eastern Oregon. We did find a few twisties in some of the canyons.

Overall it was a great trip. Definitely an adventure. We could have done without the wind or the cold temperatures, but I never mind a bit of mild discomfort to get to stay at some amazing places, ride roads I haven’t been on and see places that I haven’t seen.

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