Our first of two days drive to the northern California Coast took us through the northern Sierra Nevada mountains into Volcano country. Here the Sierra Nevadas end and the Cascade range starts.
Northern Sierra Nevadas near Honey Lake
We passed several large lakes. Because of the heavy run off the water was any other color than blue! The last half of the drive was mostly in thick forests. Many areas had been ravaged by fire.
Honey Lake in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. All the lakes I saw were very full and looked either gray or brown from the heavy runoff.
Fire-ravaged areas in the Northern Sierra Nevadas
Later in the day, we entered the area around Lassen National Park. Some of the landscape was littered with ejecta from ancient eruptions. It is the southernmost Volcano in the Cascade Range which goes north into Oregon (Crater Lake, Mount Hood) and Washington (Mount St Helens, Rainier, and Baker).
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta
Weed California
Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano that lies north of Lassen along I-5 and was our stop for the evening. It is the second-highest peak in California at just over 14 thousand feet. The weather was cloudy and threatening thunderstorms. A highlight in the area is the town of Weed. Full of t-Shirt shops supporting all manner of Marijuana-themed merch! The whole area, like Yosemite, is a destination for people enjoying the outdoors.
We stayed at a KOA that was to the east of Mount Shasta near I-5. Tomorrow will be a shorter drive up through California into Oregon and then drop back down into California along the northern coast.
Our second day began with a photo op of the mountain before disappearing into the clouds. From there it was a spectacular drive north into southern Oregon.
1999 Z3 Coupe. The original owner driving north at the rest area we stopped at. The baby brother to my M Coupe is even more rare. This one had only 43K miles on the clock!
Once at Grant’s Pass, we tacked left onto the famous Redwood Highway US 199. This drive started a long wind down to the coast. The last part was through Rewoods National / State Park.
Redwood Highway 199
It was stunning and whetted my appetite to visit some of the famous groves of these majestic beauties!
Huge tree stump at the Crescent City Redwoods KOA
The campgrounds are very nice and feature a petting zoo – of sorts! Well, they have goats and chickens anyway!
We look forward to exploring the area for the next couple of days.
We visited Lake Tahoe on the first day in the area. We drove south again and entered the middle of the east shore. At 6,200 foot elevation, Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine-feed lake in North America. The water was amazing blue in the bright morning sun.
Lake Tahoe viewed from the east shore
We visited Chimney Beach, a short drive north from where we entered. The trailhead was pretty steep but I made it down with Jake’s help 😉. Getting back was another matter, as the trail was not particularly well marked!
Lake Tahoe
From there we drove to the south end of the lake and the resort town of South Lake Tahoe. T-shirt shops abound together with flocks of tourists that come to visit the winter ski town turned summer lake resort. Perfect place to pick up a few souvenirs!
Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe’s western shore.
We then drove up the western (California) side of the lake. There are several state parks in the area and it was packed with people in the afternoon. We finished our drive heading back to Reno and a very long and fast downhill back home.
Lake Tahoe from the east shore
Virginia City
Ben and the Boys
When I was visiting Virginia City I talked to a woman working in a souvenir shop about Ben and the Boys. She told me she always had a chuckle when they hopped on their horse and the next thing you know they are in Virginia City! Big place, the Ponderosa!
I found a recommendation for the Chollar Mine tour and decided to check it out. The drive this time was south and west of Reno. I once again climbed a twisty mountain road to reach the top of Geiger summit. Named after an early pioneer in road design and construction, it was the main road into Virginia City (and why the comment from the woman in the shop!).
Lake Tahoe mountain range from Geiger grade
Virginia City turned out to be a top-shelf tourist trap complete with Fuck You Biden flags waving on every street corner. The vibe was distinctly hostile as I trod up and down the mish-mash of old buildings.
We fled as soon as we picked up some unique merch. Always on the lookout for that.
Silver mine tour – Chollar mine – the last mine to open in the late 1800s before the juice ran out!
The mine tour was a different vibe completely. I was the first car there – until three more arrived moments later! We had a good-sized group with younger children. The guy that ran the place was super knowledgeable about the history, names, dates, etc., and pretty much went on ad-nausea! Regardless, the information was interesting and delivered in a memorable style!
Old mining equipment outside on the grounds of the mine. Automation did not come at first and everything was done by hand.
The dealings, politics, and power plays he recanted spoke of a rag-tag group of men who stayed on in the area while headed for the California gold rush. Turns out it was a bust for gold but they found the largest silver veins ever discovered. Unfortunately, silver was going out of fashion in the late 1800s to be supplanted by gold. The whole 20 years of 24-hour-a-day mining went down the drain. At the peak, 25,000 people lived here!
Richard demonstrated how the mines worked before automation – with chisels and hammers. Miners got paid $4 a day. The bucket operation is $4.50! Your life depended on the bucket operator!
Then we were passed off to Richard to take us 400 ft back into the mine. It was damp (again that heavy winter rain) and I banged my head a couple of times. At the end was some equipment set up and the caved-in entrance to a shaft for one of the ten tunnels below this one!
Shaft to 10 tunnels below. The cable operator was the most important man in the mine. To disturb him was to lose your job immediately. Everyone’s life depended on him.
Richard later told me he was a long-haul trucker for 50 years before retiring here. He played the part well of an old miner and had a good – and very frank – assessment of what it was like to work in the mines. It sounded pretty bleak, like the life of a conscripted sailor in England in the 1600s! You were lucky if you lived much past 30 and only a very few men ever became rich (but they became very, very rich!)
They told us that the idea that Virginia City was a cowboy town was a myth. It was an industrial town with dozens of rock crushers, rail lines, and ariel buckets moving ore. A full-up production. And when the bottom fell out of the silver markets, it slowly morphed into a T-shirt town for tRumpers!
The Ponderosa
Thanks and goodbye to Ben and the Boys!
We wind up our three nights here. Check another one off the bucket list. We head out in the morning for Shasta Mountian.
We headed out early – 7:30 AM – our earliest start so far. I wanted to be able to take my time getting to our next stop. The route chosen took us right through the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Stanislaus National Forest on our way out of Yosemite Lakes
We left the area around Yosemite and headed north. There was another couple of windy sections as we traversed mountain areas into a different valley. At one point the road got pretty narrow and rough but it was worth it to get a taste of the rural areas.
Sierra Nevada Mountains on Highway 88.
Before crossing into Nevada we crossed over Carson Pass. At a peak of about 9000 ft, it offered epic views of the Sierra Nevada range. Historically it played an important role in the California Gold Rush as well as shipping during the Civil War.
We saw several places that had been badly damaged by fire. The water levels in the lakes looked very full from the winter rains.
Sierra Nevada Mountains
Bonanza
Surmised location of the Ponderosa in the TV series Bonanza
Once in Nevada, it reminded me of the front range in Colorado as we drove north along the east side of Lake Tahoe. When I saw Virginia City it dawned on me I had seen this place before – on Bonanza! The lyrics to the song are great!
The claim we hold is as good as gold, bonanza! Hand in hand we built this land, the Ponderosa Ranch Our birthright is this Cartwright bonanza! We here belong, and standing strong, wrong ain’t got a chance.
The campground we are staying at, like in Las Vegas, is associated with a nearby casino – Boomtown! As we set up camp the weather started looking like rain! We haven’t seen any of that stuff since driving through the South.
In the next couple of days, we will explore the Ponderosa and Lake Tahoe. Hopefully Jake will get his first experience with snow as we cross into Lake Tahoe from where we are staying outside Reno.
Bring your own supercar car in its own garage on wheels! The 2022 Ford GT starts at $.5M. Glamping at its best in Vegas, baby!
I took Jake on his very first tour of the strip in Las Vegas. He didn’t seem impressed 🤣🐶. We got in line with a bus-load of tourists (like ourselves) to take a selfie at the famous sign. Later in the week Dan, Maggie, and I went in to celebrate her birthday at Wynn’s famous buffet. I was stuffed!
I would guess that I’ve been to Vegas more times than anywhere else (if you don’t count Detroit – and I really would like to forget Detroit 🤣). In my many years of high-tech marketing Vegas is the place to go to keep the cohorts happy.
So I really didn’t want to necessarily visit Las Vegas again. On the other hand, there is a side to Vegas you don’t hear about as much – the Red Rock desert and mountains. After all the rain this year – the sights were epic!
Valley of Fire State Park
We toured Nevada’s first state park, Valley of Fire, early the first morning. It’s best described as an oasis of beautiful shades of red rock surrounded by desert. Deposits from an earlier time when the area was a river, the red rock has been since exposed and weather in a stunning display of the force of nature and time.
Valley of Fire 🔥
Very moving and yet another reminder of the star stuff we all come from. There is no difference where the elements that make up this rock and our body originate. Interstellar Overdrive, indeed!
Mother Nature at work since the time of our brother Dinosaurs 🦖
Complex uplifting and faulting of the region, followed by extensive erosion, have created the present landscape. The rough floor and jagged walls of the park contain brilliant formations of eroded sandstone and sand dunes more than 150 million years old. Other important rock formations include limestones, shales, and conglomerates. [from Wikipeadia]
Prehistoric inhabitants of the Valley of Fire included the Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, who were farmers from the nearby fertile Moapa Valley. Their approximate span of occupation has been dated from 300 BC to 1150 AD. They left us a message on the rock which has fortunately withstood the test of time.
Rainbow Gardens Overland
My friend Dan got into off-road driving and Overlanding a while back. He’s been working on equipping his awesome Land Rover with some serious hardware and taking lessons on technique. He demonstrated that superbly on the Rainbow Garden trail just east of Las Vegas. It was a blast!
Dan and his Land Rover LR6 with many modifications and added goodies 😎. A true offroad monster!
This was a vastly different landscape than we saw just a few miles north at Valley of Fire. The colors here were more varied with bright yellow and deep red showing together with some nearly white formations. Some of the hills were covered with an organism that had a grayish-purple color. Everywhere was evidence of the shaping forces of wind and water. Exquisitely beautiful and accessible thanks to Dan’s great driving.
Potosi Mine Overland to Goodsprings
Our second day of overlanding took us to Springs Mountian in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just west of Vegas. An old mine was the entrance to incredibly colorful desert scenery.
Patosi Mine Overland near Las Vegas
This route took us into spectacular scenery with Joshua Trees and many other desert plants that were in bloom. The colors – purple age, strawberry hedgehog cactus, yellow desert marigold – were stunning. The settings with the colorful plants and Joshua Trees were amazing. We even got lost a couple of times to test Dan’s skill and my fearlessness 🤣. The Land Rover didn’t care – it just kept on ticking!
At the end of the drive, we stopped at Goodsprings and visited the historic Pioneer Saloon for some merch. It was a great day’s ride!
We enjoyed our time here with our friends and got to see some splendid sights! We now start our two-day journey to Yosemite. Long on my bucket list, we have to go the long way around because of all the winter rains and snow in the mountain passes. Should make for beautiful sights at the park though!
A two-day drive back to the desert. We are heading to Lost Wages 🤩 to meet up with old friends Dan and Maggie Matheson. They got me into RV’ing several years ago and it will be our second meet-up on the road!
Jake and I drove the same route I took when visiting my parents and brother Dave in Lancaster from 1975-1978. The first part of the drive opened up after a mountain pass to a vast agricultural vista. Acre after acre of growing operations. Of particular interest were the Orange groves. Many of the trees were covered with a gauze-like fabric. This apparently keeps bees out when you are growing seedless fruit. I passed one vineyard that seemed to go on for several miles.
Windfarm near Mojave California (Google images David Bowman)
After that, it was back to the desert. I stopped for the evening in Boron, just east of Mojave. As I dropped into Mojave there was another very large wind farm. Some of the windmills were smaller, something I had not seen before. There was also a large ‘boneyard’ for jet airliners. Where aircraft go to die ☠️.
Twenty Mule Team Borax
Boron is home to the company Borax. I remember that name from my young childhood. They were sponsors of a TV program called Death Valley Days. Their tagline and mascots were Twenty Mule Team Borax. The plant sits right outside town and offers tours. They basically mine soap 🤣. Maybe next time!
Other than that Boron looked very lowkey. Edwards Airforce Base is also nearby more jobs. The trailer next to me had a multitude of cables running into their trailer and my phone was a full-tilt 5G hotspot. Wired ⚡️at least.
The second day was an easy – and interesting – one on the way to Vegas. I noticed a section of Route 66 that runs through Barstow and a Route 66 Museum! We stopped to take a look and pick up some merch! There were several museums there including one for Trains and even a NASA exhibition.
Back on the road, the traffic picked up, cars whizzing past me on some crazed mission. Everyone from SoCal was headed to Vegas for the Memorial Day weekend! Big Fun! I saw some near misses as people lost their tiny minds and drove like they were being driven by the Hounds Of Hell!
As we approved the state line I saw one of the most incredible sights of my life.
Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System – Photon Concentrator
This is a solar power generating station. I had seen pictures of it in the past but seeing it close up like this was breathtaking. The air around the mirrors and central collector (where it is turned into steam to run a turbine) was like something out of a science fiction movie. Boy, do I love science!
We pulled into Las Vegas KOA at Sam’s Town midafternoon to find out friends were already there and set up. The campground sits next to a standalone Casino & Hotel with a movie theater and bowling alley. Everything you need to keep everyone in the family entertained!
