Unexpected Iowa-Related Encounter

July 24, 2013

Day 31: Fallon, Nevada to Crystal Springs Campground (near Woodfords, California)

This was an interesting day, in that it included what was undoubtedly the least pleasant riding, through the ugliest scenery, of the entire trip, but was saved by some very, very nice riding in the last third of the day as I made it to California.

I left around 7:00 and made a stop at a Maverik convenience store for breakfast: A quart of chocolate milk and a burrito. It was easy riding out of Fallon, the first town in a long time whose population was large enough to support a WalMart. Fallon was an attractive, large-ish agriculture-oriented town which marked the end of the Loneliest Road.

I continued onto the no-longer-lonely US 50 as it split from the busier "Alt 50" outside of town. Almost immediately things looked bleak. The route on US 50 the last week had been almost entirely empty of houses and business, but now I started passing many ramshackle, cluttered places. My first stop was at Silver Springs, which (based on what I saw) is more of a crossroads with some gas stations than an actual town. I made a soda-and-Gatorade stop at one of the gas stations where the clerk initially seemed to doubt the authenticity of my driver's license (required at the store for a credit card purchase.) Maybe I no longer resemble the license photo, which was taken about 25 lbs ago.

The stretch between Silver Springs and Stagecoach was some of the ugliest scenery I've ever ridden through: Defunct businesses on weed-choked lots, houses surrounded by junk, weathered signs offering "5 Acre Lots" for sale. I'm guessing that the area had gone through a real estate boom and bust. Traffic was very heavy, but the shoulder was wide, albeit junk-strewn. During one of several stops to examine my tires, I noticed a beetle on its back, so I flipped it over and watched it scurry away. This was a minor good deed which of course does not make up for the awful incident weeks ago when I accidentally ran over and crushed a small turtle with the bike. I still feel terrible about that.

The town of Dayton looked sort of interesting, but I didn't linger there since I wasn't making good time today at all, primarily due to my penchant for stopping at every Maverik store along the way and indulging in my bad habit of purchasing enormous cups of fountain soda pop. After several days in Nevada when there were no services for 70 or 80 miles at a time, I had gone wild now that I could get cold drinks every few miles.

At one of my afternoon stops I realized I hadn't eaten anything since the breakfast burrito, so I walked into a "Jack in the Box" fast food place, where the kitchen workers were loudly yelling at each other in such an annoying fashion that I had to get out the iPod to drown out their inanities. I was hoping I'd see an In-N-Out Burger, which is one of the few things I miss about the three years I lived in the west, but it didn't happen today. I had high hopes for that happening when I reached California, however.

As I left the Jack in the Box, another customer, an old man who was staggering around in an alarming manner, also left, got on an enormous motorcycle, and absolutely roared out of the parking lot, sans helmet, into the stream of traffic. I was looking forward to getting on a quieter road. Soon.

Before that happened, though, I had to get into and out of Carson City. Traffic was extremely busy for a while, and I rode through tons of crap on the road. It was a miracle I didn't get a flat tire. The route through the city itself was good, and then I had two more miles of unpleasantness on the way out (Jeff's bike touring rule #58: If you are riding next to a Best Buy store, your route almost certainly sucks.)

I made a right turn onto Jacks Valley Road and everything changed. So nice. Green fields, mountain views, trees, light traffic, smooth pavement. The town of Genoa was extremely pretty, but, as I learned when I looked at a menu outside a cafe and saw that a hamburger cost $13, too expensive for me to linger there.

(I had an interesting Iowa-related encounter while in Genoa. A man walked up and asked what I was doing, and upon learning where I had started the trip, asked if I had heard about the recent storms that had disrupted RAGBRAI in Perry, near where I began. He was from Rhode Island, and although it had been several years since he had done RAGBRAI, he still kept up with each year's ride. He seemed a little disappointed that I had never done the ride, and I found myself telling him I would try to do it next year. We'll see.)

There was more nice, mostly flat riding after Genoa as the sun started to go down behind the mountains, and then I entered California, greeted by the least impressive state line sign ever, quickly followed by the steepest climb since Utah.

There was nothing open in Woodfords, the first little village in California, so I continued up the mountain and stopped in the first US Forest Service campground I saw. The campground was nice and mostly empty, but as usual in these USFS campgrounds, I got no shower or flushing toilets for my $16. The campground host was a nice guy who directed me to what he said was the best tent site (#5), then mentioned that he was known for the above average cleanliness of the pit toilets in his campground. As I pondered this for a few seconds, he said "I guess that's a strange thing to be known for." Yes, but better than being known for having the dirtiest pit toilets around, I suppose.

There were black bears in the area, so I hung my now-meager cache of snacks from a tree branch. (The campground host told me not to worry about hanging it very high, since "the bears can't smell up." Later, on seeing the photo of the pannier hanging about four feet above the ground, Joy expressed doubts about the campground host's "expert" advice.) Hey: What do I know about camping?

I got things set up just before dark, and had a nice surprise when the campground host brought me a cold bottle of "vitamin water". That, along with a couple of Pop Tarts I'd actually forgotten I had been carrying for a while, was dinner.

Today's ride: 100 miles (161 km)
Total: 2,561 miles (4,122 km)

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