Big Recap

Ok,  So it's almost 5 months since our last blog about a trip that was 7 months ago. . .we are serious slackers in the world of blogging!  Just couldn't help it though.  We got caught up in life and took a few pictures here and there, but there just didn't seem to be time to write about it.  It's not that we didn't want to share, we just didn't take the time.


So, I'll do a recap of the last 7 months and then you can fill in the blanks with whatever your imagination desires.  Make it magical! Make it exotic! Our life is occupied with the ordinary day-to-day habits, but we Reeds know how to have fun, too!

Red Bull MotoGP races were the grand finale to our Cali trip

Racers coming down the corkscrew

Best Anniversary Trip, Ever!

While Ty and Angela were partying in Cali, Jean took on the task as Nanny for the week.  The kids had such an awesome time, they didn't want to leave.  The temperature in Nashville was "Hot-Enough-to-Fry-an-Egg", cold treats and pool time was a favorite on the agenda.

Swimming at Jean and Larry's place

Milla eating her icy treat

Jean, the best sister in the world!

Before the summer let out. . .

Izzy learned to ride

The family enjoyed Rickwood Caverns in Alabama

Izzy had her ears pierced

  
Then school was in for not just one, but two kids!

Gavin started the 3rd grade, Izzy started Kindergarten, Milla has free-reign of all toys and Mommy time!

Izzy has Mrs. Boyer, later Mrs. Anita, for her Kindergarten teacher

Gavin has Mrs. Nancy Sewell for his teacher-- he was ready to get  to school

First day for Izzy to ride "The Big Cheese"

Izzy in the Kindergarten Community Helper Parade

There's usually a bad ending to an awesome summer. . .school.  However, we Reeds like to do it a little differently.  We started school for a week and then we said "Ha Ha, psych you teachers, we are outta here for one last vacation.  You can't stop us!" 


Our first stop was Warrensburg, MO to visit our best friends: Zach, Rikki, Jackson, Shade, Aynslee and Blaze Stewart.  We had such a good time, no one wanted to leave.


We did manage to pull ourselves away early the next morning and head to St. Anthony, Idaho for a Reed family reunion.  The weather was absolutely perfect for the long drive.  We stopped the next night and camped out in Custer State Park.  We arrived in Idaho tired, but so happy to see everyone.

We enjoyed "the People in the Mountain" on the way to Idaho

Campout at Custer State Park

We got the chance to spend a day in Yellowstone National Park.  The place where Grandpa Jack Reed grew up.  It was one of the most exciting and wonderful days of the trip.  We loved listening to stories and imagining a young Grandpa's adventures.  It did get a little warm, but the weather stayed perfect.

Gavin and Old Faithful

A day at Yellowstone was not enough time!

The weather and scenery was absolutely perfect

A most beautiful view

Ty thinking about his Dad as a school boy

We spent the rest of our reunion time playing with family and enjoying the moments.  St. Anthony's is known for its natural sand dunes, so we had to "experience" them.   

The Infamous Sand Dunes (you'll have to ask Gavin about that story)

Though the drive was long (both ways), we did surprisingly well.  It will always be remembered in the Reed home as one of the "best trips ever"!

Here's a short clip I assembled from a few of the roads we sampled in northern California.

Cali Trip Day 5--Last day on the bike

Wednesday

Despite sleeping well, we woke up early on Wed. morning and were on the road by 6:45am. Perhaps it was the fact that I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take us to get back to Mountain View that had me worried a bit. The morning temps were hovering around 51 deg so I hit the switch for the heated grips and raised the windscreen all the way up. Our goal for Wed. was to take scenic Hwy 70 out of the mountains and then head south and west back to Mountain View and the rental place. We had to be there no later than 5pm. 

The town of Chester rests on the north shore of Lake Almanor.  The water was like glass as we sailed by.

 Aside from a couple areas where we had to wait on road repairs being made, 70 is another great road. It follows the Feather River through the Plumas National forest and has lots of great corners, very good pavement, and great scenery too. 

Feather River, a train, and mountains.  

More views on Hwy 70

TUNNEL!!

The west end of 70 had brand new tarmac so it was billiard table smooth with a great combo of high speed sweepers to cap it off.

Once we dropped out of the mountains, the temperature immediately started rising, the road straightened out and the traffic increased. We stopped for gas, shed our thermal layers and settled into the long slog back to Ingred's home. We hit Sacramento about lunch time and enjoyed Thai food at a place right off the interstate. Once we hit Sacramento, traffic really picked up and it was pretty much wall to wall cars all the way back to Mountain View. I had not really ever ridden in that much traffic for that length of time and found it to be really stressful. I tried to utilize the HOV lanes as much as possible, kept a pace slightly quicker than the flow of traffic and scanned ahead for signs of trouble. The problem was since we didn't have the use of our GPS, I didn't know how much farther we had, when the next turn was coming up or anything. We had jotted down the directions earlier so Angela would just call out the next interstate or road that I needed to take. The issue with that was the fact that the high temperatures had caused the glue on the double sided tape that holds Angela's communicator to her helmet to soften, allowing her communicator to fall off at random times. So while she was trying to play navigator, she was also trying to hold her communicator on and keep everything where it needed to be. Regardless of the difficulties, she did a marvelous job.

We arrived at the rental place with plenty of time to spare. I was relieved to return Ingred to her owners in the same condition that we had gotten, except with an extra 907 miles on the odometer and a lot less rubber on the tires. So long Ingred, it was a great ride!

Our next hotel was located in downtown San Francisco at the west end of Lombard street. Once we got close to the city, traffic slowed to a crawl and remained that way all the way to our hotel. It took us about 2 hours to get from the bike rental place to our hotel. After getting checked in, we hopped on a bus and went straight to the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge itself was really cool. My gripe is with all the wanna be Lance Armstrongs that feel the need to ride across the bridge at full clip. We saw one cyclist wreck when someone unknowingly backed into his path.

Big Brother is watching you!

After many pictures of the bridge and surrounding areas, we headed off to China Town for dinner. Angela picked a great restaurant and we enjoyed authentic chinese food for a change.  It seems like every chinese restaurant in the state of MS serves exactly the same junk, so when none of the dishes on the menu at the Great Eastern restaurant sounded familiar, I knew we were in for a treat. Angela's clay pot dish held several sea food items we couldn't identify, but each one as really tasty. The Peking Duck I ordered was juicy, with a nice, crispy skin. And the steamed rolls were incredibly light with just a hint of sweetness.

After dinner, we strolled through China Town and then decided to work off dinner by walking all the way back to our hotel. This included walking up the crookedest street in the country. That is one steep hill!

Cali Trip Day 4--Volcanoes and Steaks

Tuesday

Another epic day of riding in the books. Out of the hotel by nine am, we started off by back tracking just a bit to go back to Humboldt Redwoods State Park for some pictures since we didn't actually stop on our way through yesterday. It was neat to get up close a personal to those old trees. I'm still blown away by the size of them. 

Panorama of a fallen Giant Redwood. 

Angela loved the Redwoods.  

How do I get the pictures to rotate back to vertical?

Walking around this grove of trees felt like being in church.  

After a few pictures we're back in sport touring mode as we turned east at the start of CA Hwy 36, which is supposed to be one of the all time great motorcycle roads in CA. Since I haven't ridden much of California, I can't tell if its one of the greatest, but I can say that it is an amazing stretch of pavement. 36 starts innocently enough with a lazy trip through a small grove of redwoods and then begins a twisting accent into the mountains with a lot of slow, tight first and second gear corners. After gaining some elevation, the road opens up a bit and we enjoyed several assents and decents that were just amazing....great pavement, and never ending series of 3^rd and fourth gear corners that kept the bike leaned way over for what seemed to be an eternity.

A scene from the western portion of  Hwy 36

We entered Shasta National Forest high in the mountains. Scenery was breathtaking with fantastic vistas but the road still demanded all of my attention. We came around one corner to find a Doe and her fawn in the road. We hit the brakes and they got on the gas and scaled a near vertical dirt and rock wall to escape Ingred's oncoming headlight. We saw a few more deer within the next couple of miles as well as one kamikazi chipmunk. We stopped for a break at a scenic overlook and finished off the cherries we had purchased at a roadside stand a couple of days before. After this we decended out of Shasta national forest with a great series of corners with one high speed sweeper in particular that had me laughing out load in my helmet...it was soooo loooong and just kept begging for more speed and lean angle.

Somewhere in Shasta National Forest

See those corners? Now picture riding those for a few hours non-stop...that's CA 36.

At this point, the landscape changed from alpine to dry, arid, land with scrubby trees.

Hwy 36 changed its tone too...now instead of long corners leading up and down mountains, the hwy followed the contours of the land...short hills and quick, sharp corners. It was exactly like a roller coaster. This portion definitely kept me on my toes since there were plenty of blind corners and turns hidden right behind the hill crests. At one point, I'm sure I could have gotten the big RT airborne had we gotten enough speed. Sadly, we got behind some dude in an old RV and missed out on some of the fun.

The fun came to an end just as we entered the town of Red Bluff. By this point it was 85 degrees and we needed to shed a few layers as well as fuel the bike and ourselves. I must admit that Ingred had shown she could dance quite well, way better than her chunky looks and heft would have me believe. There were no more chicken strips on the back tire!

After a lunch of pizza and salad, we continued east on 36 to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We once again climed into the moutnains and enjoyed fantastic scenery. I think we hit elevations around 8000ft. The snow pack was still several feet high in many places in the park.  

Scenic overlook a few miles east of Redbluff on Hwy 36

See that snow capped peak off in the distance?  That's where we were headed.

Angela and Ingred at the entrance to the park

These little flowers were soaking up as much sun as possible

My mom always reminded me that I was snow angel.

Still a lot of snow up there in July

Steam vent.

After taking our time in the park, we continued on to Chester, where we stayed for the night. Since there was a nice little park right behind the hotel and a grocery store across the street, we decided to cook our own dinner that night. We walked across the street to the grocery store and bought food and charcoal, then walked back across the street to the park and cooked up a wonderful dinner of steak, grilled asparagus (stinky pee!!!) and toasted fresh rolls.  We ate them beside a bubbling creek while we watched a city softball game at the nearby field. It was fantastic.

Before

After

This is the look of happiness after one of the BEST DAYS EVER!

Truly, this has been one of the best days of riding I have ever had.  Hwy 36 lived up to the hype. It was long and varied in terrain, vistas, and elevation as well as the types of curves.  The weather was perfect.  The bike was perfect for the job and I couldn't wish for a better traveling companion in Angela.