Woke up this morning, went and by the time I got the tent down, loaded the bike and made a phone call Randy showed up. Its good to see him again. We bullshitted for a minute then headed out by 10.
The road was great. on the way to delta, Randy showed me a spot where he and his grandpa used to go, an old general store in leamington. Its closed now, but looked like a cool place. Randys grandpa was one of a kind. when we lived in Long beach in 89, got to know him a little bit and the stories of him and the things he said and did always make me smile.
burned through and ate in delta, then headed on the straight road to great basin national park. It was a nice ride, not too hot, 5 or so degrees out of being just perfect. We stopped at the nevada/utah border because we had some time to kill before the cave tours at lehman caves, grabbed something cold to drink and headed to the caves.
Apparantly we killed too much time, and just barely missed the tour.
So we bought some of the last 2 tickets for the day and headed up to wheeler peak drive, to kill an hour before our 90 minute tour. Wheeler peak drive was really nice, climbs 10,000 feet in about 10 miles or so, up into the pines. From the view areas you can see clear across nevada. A nice nevada surprise. We considered bagging going into ely and camping up there. I’d like to take the RV up and go back there with the kids. Definately a beautiful place, and not too far away. We went to the top, and raced back down just in time to grab our tour of the caves, without a minute to spare.
I’ve been in a few cave tours before, and I’d have to say this was the best. Lehman Caves is a wet cave, so its still very active in growing and was nice and cool down there. In addition to being the coolest looking cave I’ve ever seen, our tour guide was great. You could tell right away she really loved people and loved what she was doing, and it showed in the first 5 minutes. She made the stories and geology of the cave come alive for everyone, and the 90 minute tour was perfect.
The skies had clouded up even more and you could smell the rain that was about to happen. We decided to head into Ely, it didnt look like it was going to be any drier than it was at that moment, so we loaded up and headed out.
Just as we hit the town limits the wind started raging. We pulled into the KOA a
nd I ran inside to see if they had at least a cabin to crash in for cheap, since putting up a tent in a storm just didnt seem like fun. They didnt. we headed into town and got a room at the white pine, a bit of a roach motel that Ive stayed in before with the family. It was shmeggy, but it was better than a tent.
Heading up and down the passes Randy broke his return throttle cable. Randy got his bike from a guy for $125 bucks, and I gotta say, it ran great. For a 1980’s bike that had been neglected for so long, to come out of the trip with something as minor as a throttle cable was impressive. Randy didnt mind, he’s a good field mechanic and came up with a few options to fix it in the morning. We ran down to the casino, got a gristle steak, and then went back to the room and crashed.
My first options anymore are to ride by myself. I dont mind it, and I don’t have to deal with anyones crap and can ride at whatever pace I want. Randy is one exception to that. Everytime we ride its always good, with zero hassles and the conversation is good. Today was a perfect example of that. We didnt ride too far, but all in all it was all good.
Rode 208 Miles today
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