Sat. Nov. 15 The traffic was real heavy and we missed the turn at San Jose is the reason we wound up spending the night in Morgan Hill last night. So we head north back to San Jose to see the Winchester Mystery House. When we arrive, we find out there will be over an hour wait till they open. We decide to skip the house tour and get on hwy 17 to Santa Cruz. There we take hwy 1 to Carmel where we take a look around town and make our way down to the beach. Lot of people walking the beach, swimming and surfing. We talk to several of the people in town and at the beach. Of course they couldn't believe we had ridden all the way from Ms. and a few said they wish they could do something like that themselves. Our next stop after leaving Carmel is Big Sur where we stop for fuel. Next door is the River Inn, a motel - restaurant started in 1934 that advertised country dining. A lot of motorcycles and cars parked there so we go in for a bite of lunch. Their definition of country dining is not the same as I'm use to around here. Everything is organic. Not wanting tofu, I decide on a salad, $16, with romaine lettuce, they don't have iceburg. Waitress ask if I want free-range chicken breast on it, only $6 more. The thing comes and the piece of chicken was the size of 4 dominos. Don't know if their free-range chickens are what we call roadrunners back here. The tea looked like they scraped rust off some irrigation pipe and mixed water with it, why can't there be a national standard to go by on how to made good tea. We continue south on hwy 1. Along the way you can see the beauty of the ocean waves crashing on the rocks and beach. We cross the Rocky Creek Bridge built in 1932, it is one of 2 we cross on our way south. You can be riding along looking at the ocean and then the road pulls away from the ocean edge and then there would be cattle grazing in pastures or there would be fields of vegatables growing. Just before reaching San Simeon, we see a lot of cattle and the a herd of elk. We figure out later they were on the Hearst Ranch, which at one time contained 250,000 acres. We pull over just at dusk where they have a walk way to look at the Elephant seals that sleep on the beach at night. A few more miles down the road we reach San Simeon where we spend the night. After checking in, we walk next door for supper, better choice of food here. The motel we stay in has 3 fire pits along the beach. People are sitting out by the fires, really nice. The room has no A/C, you leave the window open a little for. I listened to the waves crashing on the beach that night as I fell asleep.

Sun. Nov. 16 It's a nice 58 degrees this morning when we get up. While killing time waiting for the Hearst Castle to open, we walk down to the beach to look around. Out about 400 yards we see a school of those orca whales swimming down the coast. Went to the visitor center to take the Hearst Castle tour. If you are ever in the vicinity of this place, you must go see what a man with too much money and power can spend in excess. It is unbelievable with all the art, statues and woodwork inside this place. Some of the things date back 3000 years. Leaving the castle we go south to hwy 46 that takes up into the mountains , see more vineyards before reaching hwy 101. As we approach Santa Barbara, we are back along the ocean. Seeing oil rigs out in the Pacific. Made it to Ventura at dark where we get a room. Find a sports bar a few blocks away for food. There are a lot of Mexicans there watching the football game. We learn from their actions and jerseys that their team was Dallas and it became our's as well. After the meal we returned to the motel for the night.

From Yosemite to San Francisco

Thru. Nov. 13 It's 48 degrees and very foggy this morning in Exeter, Ca so we sit at the tables in lobby of the motel while munching on doughnuts and drinking orange juice. We talk to an equipment rep. from Santa Maria while waiting for the fog to lift. He tells us about some of the different crops grown in the areas. He said the highest rent paid per acre runs around $2500 for the land you see strawberries growing on. There has been a lot of the ag. land lost to development especially close to cities like where he lives. The fog has lift around 9:00 so we head to the drug store to pick up some medicine Joe had phoned in from Dr. Flautt for his sinus crud. Leaving Exeter at 10:00 we hit hwy 99 to Fresno and then get on hwy 41 thru town on our way to Yosemite Nat. Park. Hwy 41 took us by the Wanona Hotel. It's an old wooden hotel, the first building built in 1876 as part of a stage stop. The main building was built in 1879. There are six different buildings to the hotel. There is no tv nor telephone at the hotel, but the rooms are furnished in victorian period pieces and antiques. If you ever decide to vacation in the area check out this place as one of your night stops. On past the hotel and golf course we travel the scenic curvy road thru the redwoods and several tunnels to the waterfall on the Merced River. I was disipointed we didn't see any large animals as we rode thru the park, maybe if we had gone hwy 140 instead which was along the river valley we would have seen some. We ride along the river for aways until we get to hwy 120, there is a sign for hwy 140, which runs along the river saying road is flooded, so we take hwy 120. This take us to Chinese Camp and on to Oakdale for the night.

Fri Nov. 14 We leave Oakdale, it's 53 degrees, and take hwy 99 up to Lodi where we get on hwy 12 west. We cross a couple of waterways, one of them Potato Slough, before getting to Rio Vista where we cross the Sacramento River. It is between those rivers we go thru what they call The Delta. There was a lot of flooded corn fields with a lot of geese and ducks. East of Fairfield we see more wind turbines. The wind around Fairfield and the Travis Air Force Base was really strong. The C5 planes flying in and out of the base looked like the were sitting still in the air. Hwy 12 takes us thru Napa and on to Sonoma with all their vineyards and wineries. Up town Sonoma, we stop for a drink, has the look as being pricey. We reach Santa Rosa and with the temp at 94, we pull our long sleeve shirts off. We get on hwy 101 heading south to San Fransico. Before we know it we are crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, looking to our right at the Pacific Ocean and to our left, San Francisco and the Bay. Boy, is this cool or what, on my Harley, all the way from Mississippi and riding it across this beautiful bridge and way too soon , we are stopping at the south end to pay our $6 for the privilege of crossing it. As we start into town I notice how pretty and pristine all the building are along the highway. We turn left to the wharf where we park to take the views of the Golden Gate on our left, Alcatraz out in front, and Fisherman's Wharf on our right. There is so much to see it's hard to soah it all in. After leaving the wharf we were parked on, we ride down Fisherman's Wharf and then onto hwy 101 heading out of San Francisco. We stop in Morgan Hill for the night.

Looking for the Big Trees

Wed. Nov 12 It's a nice 55 degrees this morning when we leave Ridgecrest. We fuel-up before leaving town and there a few naval jets taking off, climbing fast and high out of the valley which is surrounded by high mountains. We take Hwy 178 towards Lake Issabella where we turn north to Kernville to enter the southern part of the Sequioa Forest. At Kernville we talk to the locals about our route. One, a retired deputy sheriff from that area, said we need to stop by the Ranger Station up town to check the road conditions because they had snow a few days earlier up there. The girls manning the station said they had to close the road 2 days ago. They gave us an alternate route that would be iffy on ice conditions or we could take hwy 178 to Bakersfield and try to enter the Sequioa Forest on the west side of the mountains. We choose Bakersfield. We ride along scienic, curvy Kern River from Lake Isabella till we make our way onto flat-to-rolling farm land. We stop for lunch when we turn on hwy 65. Next door is the Harley store, so we hit it before heading north to the big trees. As we leave Bakersfield we see oil wells running and they are drilling more. It's at least 1 well per acre of ground for miles along hwy 65. Soon we start seeing lots of grape vineyards. When we reach Exeter we turn onto hwy 198 which takes us into the Giant Sequioa Nat. Forest. You can't ride thru here very fast because it's a very curvy road going up the mountain and of all the animals you can encounter. One car stops us to warn that a mother bear and her cubs were just around the next curve at the picnic area. Lucky for us they had moved on. I kept seeing these balls hanging from some trees that had no leaves and along the road there were big brown round looking balls lying there. I had to stop a get a few and I told joe they were buckeyes, but they were larger than any I had seen. Later on I learn they are called California Buckeyes. Two miles from the Sequioa Museum where the tall trees are, we run into wet spots on the road, along with snow on the sides. I put my feet down on the pavement to check for ice because we had been warned of black ice. I didn't find any ice but we were extra careful when we got into the shady areas where the wet road hadn't dried off. It was slow going but we finally reached the giant trees and checked out the museum there. It was well worth the trip to see these giant trees and of how they have survived for all these years. It's 4:17pm and I tell Joe that I don't want to be going down this wet stretch of road when it freezes in a little while. On our trip down we have to stop at one point to wait for a black bear to get out of the road so we can continue. Unlike a car, there's nothing between him and my leg for dinner. As he leaves the road, he flushes 4 muledeer, one a nice buck, from the trees. When we get to the otherside of the curve in the road, we stop to look at him emerging from the trees on that side. We stop a couple more times as we decend down the mountain to take the beauty in. The mountain peeks at one point were sticking out of the clouds below us as the sun was going down. It takes us a good hour to reach Three Rivers where we eat supper. It's around 8:00pm when we made our way back to Exeter to spend the night.