Drive Home

November 9, 2016

I drove home on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, a route I pedaled in 2009 during my 2009 California J tour. That tour included audacious detours to Kearsarge Pass and Red's Meadow. But it missed some interesting places that were just too much trouble to get to by bike. Now is my chance to see them.

It took 3 days to get home because the roads are more winding and I visited 3 tourist attractions that I had never seen:

Red Rock Canyon State Park
Bodie State Historical Park
Virginia City, Nevada

November 10, 2016. Mojave to Bridgeport by car.

On November 10 I visited Red Rock Canyon State Park and soaked at 3 hot springs. I surely spent more time stopped than driving.

I hiked 2 miles in Red Rock canyon state park. Easy scenic hikes. It's the kind of place where I want to hike the trail in the morning, then again in late afternoon to see it with a different sun angle.

Red Rock Canyon State Park is a popular desert recreation area, where the Sierra Nevada mountains begin to rise abruptly from the Mojave desert. It's best to visit during winter because it's 110F every day during summer.

Many western movie scenes were filmed there because it's so convenient. Only a 100 mile drive from Hollywood.

I'm glad I made the easy detour west of US 395 to see the park. It's very far from where I live in an area that I normally never wander.

This is the best trail at Red Rock Canyon State Park.

View from the window shown on the left in the previous picture.

I wasn't impressed with the camel rock. Maybe it looks better in afternoon light.

View from the Red Cliffs nature trail. This reminds me of Palo Duro canyon in Texas.

My first hot spring stop was at Keogh Hot Ditch. The water was 97F on a sunny 62F morning. My second hot spring stop was at Wild Willy's in the Long Valley Caldera southeast of Mammoth Lakes. 5 miles east of US 395. It's very popular but I had the pool to myself for the first 20 minutes. The pool has been expanded, lowering the temperature somewhat. It was a perfect 102F on a 70 degree sunny afternoon. I've soaked at 8 hot springs in the caldera but this one is the most user-friendly.

Wild Willy's hot spring is in an ancient supervolcano called Long Valley Caldera.

Continuing the drive north on US 395 I took a short stop at the Mono Lake overlook to admire the view. Visibility was good.

Looking down on Mono Lake 2000 feet below.

The final hot spring stop was at the always scenic Travertine Hot Spring. I had a long evening soak there, chatting with a man from Colorado traveling with a woman from Israel. The hot spring is only 4 miles from my motel in Bridgeport. The tub on the right was 108F, way too hot for me. I soaked in the middle pool that was 102F.

November 11, 2016. Bridgeport to Susanville by car.

Today's tourist detours are historic mining towns. First is Bodie State Historical Park which is surely the best ghost town in the country. It had a very short gold mining boom around 1880. The population peaked at 8000. Only 5% of the original structures remain. The surviving structures are stabilized but not restored.

The town is at 8379 feet elevation, 13 miles east of US 395. The last 3 miles of the road is extremely rough gravel. It's just not convenient to visit by bicycle. The photos clearly show that it's on the dry sagebrush-covered eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. Not a tree in sight despite the high elevation.

Bodie, California. America's best ghost town.

Bodie State Historical Park. A gold mining ghost town in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Stamp Mill at Bodie. A stamp mill crushes the ore.

This was the only brick building in town. The visitor center is the building with benches and an open door.

Visitors can only go inside a few structures.

Stylish glass-enclosed hearse in the visitor center.

Sierra Nevada view when returning from Bodie to US 395. There was probably no snow 2 weeks ago.

Today's second major tourist stop is Virginia City, Nevada which is the site of the Comstock Lode, the richest silver mine in U.S. history. They mined so much silver that the government built a mint in Carson City to avoid having to transport silver to the Philadelphia mint. Virginia City is a living town and a big tourist attraction, high in the mountains between Carson City and Reno. 6148 feet elevation. It's a popular day trip for Reno area residents and Lake Tahoe tourists.

During a 2013 bike tour I visited another historic mining town called Virginia City in the state of Montana. It's also a great place to visit-smaller, more remote, and more curated than Virginia City, Nevada.

Virginia City's slogan is "The Richest Place on Earth".

The main tourist activity is to walk the boardwalks that go half a mile on both sides of main street.

Virginia City, Nevada. Decorated for Veterans Day.

November 12, 2016. Susanville, California to Oakland, Oregon by car.

I didn't make any tourist stops on the final leg of the drive home. I did snap a photo of Mt. Shasta from the Weed Airport rest area along I-5. I was happy to see Mt. Shasta because it was hidden by clouds when I drove south.

14,180 foot Mt. Shasta from the Weed airport rest area.

I got home at 1:30 PM, almost exactly 72 hours after I departed Yucca Valley. The bike stayed inside my car but I visited so many interesting places during the drive home that mentally it seemed like an extension of the bike tour.

The 1034 mile drive home was very mountainous but my Prius got 51 miles per gallon thanks to favorable winds and low speeds.

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