Miles: 422.1
Start: 815 AM PDT
Stop: 3:20 PM PDT
Temps: 60 degrees to 100 degrees
Hotel: Quality Inn, Winnemucca, NV = $66.32
As always during the night before our first day of a long ride, Carole and I both slept fitfully. We thought by getting to bed at a late hour (11PM, which is late when you consider that we had the alarm set for 6AM) we would sleep okay. But Carole was awake at 2:30 and I arose at 5:00 AM. The excitement was just too much to sleep through. So we finalized our packing, loaded up the bikes and headed out at close to 8:15. There was no rush since our reservations for our first night were in Winnemucca, NV, a mere seven hours away.
The traffic out of the bay area was much lighter than we anticipated. We decided rather than taking the typical route to Reno we would skirt through Tracey since the Altamont Pass and its windmill power generators is much more interesting. Sure, we could have taken a much more scenic route to Nevada but we had done them all at one time or another and rather than see something we had seen before we decided to go freeway most of the way to make our first day a short one. As we rode through Altamont Pass on I-580 it donned on me that I had never taken pictures of the windmill power generators so I pulled my camera out of the left glove box while cruising down the freeway at 75 mph and snapped off a couple of pictures of the windmills and the valley below.
Once we made it through Sacramento the temperature started to climb. By the time we made it to Colfax the temperature was 94 degrees at 11 AM. But the climb to Donner Summit on I-80 brought the temperatures down into the 80's. I was comfortable the whole trip as I was only wearing mesh gear with underwear. Carole had elected to wear a thermal shirt and jeans under her mesh gear so she was feeling the heat much more than I was.
We dropped down from Donner Pass into Reno where we both did not even want to think of stopping. There is something about Reno that just doesn't thrill us but I can't really put my finger on it. At any rate we passed on through and stopped for refreshments and fuel in the thriving metropolis of Fernley, NV. As desolate as this outpost in the desert is, the people are the friendliest you'll ever want to meet. Too friendly for a couple of travelers that just want to get back on the road. But we made polite conversation while sucking down water and a Diet Pepsi (my biggest vice that drives a health conscious Carole up the wall). We did get a moment to chat with a GL1500 rider that was heading in the opposite direction as us. He had just come from Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, and Deadwood but I didn't press him for any information. I wanted to experience our future destinations with innocence of mind. We bid our farewell and watched him pull off with a trailer in tow as we mounted up.
We got back on I-80 and met the desert heat head on. Carole had removed her jeans and shirt at the gas stop and was much more comfortable in her mesh gear with just the minimum underwear beneath. The temp was 100 degrees dead on and stayed there for the remainder of our day. I pulled out the camera and took a couple of pictures of the desolate yet beautiful landscape and then asked Carole on the CB to pull up next to me so I could get a couple of pictures of her riding down the road. Afterward she decided to take the lead for a while. As I later learned, using the camera from the bike was a way to snap pictures of scenery that didn't have a convenient view point other than from the bike. Most of the pictures I ended up taking on this trip were done in this fashion.
We wingers with our cruise control get spoiled. Since Carole was leading and doesn't have so much as a throttle lock I disengaged my cruise control to keep pace with her variations in speed. My wrist started feeling the effort after just 50 miles. Since the speed limit was 75 mph on this stretch of freeway we kicked it up to about 85 and tore across the desolation. It was fun riding on her flank, passing the sparse traffic as we road through terrain similar to that seen in the Mad Max films.
Too soon we arrived in Winnemucca and pulled into our motel. As with most motels in Nowhere, Nevada, our hotel had an attached casino. At check-in we were given coupons for free drinks, free gambling money, free postcards, and free breakfast. The free drinks and breakfast were a treat! So we first changed into cooler clothes and then went out to wipe down the bikes and cover them up for the night. Then we hit the lounge and used our free drink coupons before checking out the casino restaurant. In the restaurant we quickly found that there was nothing on the menu that suited our vegetarian diet but we had noticed that there was a Round Table Pizza across the street. I realized that we hadn't eaten all day and my energy was plummeting now that we were off the bike.
We walked to the pizza joint and ordered a Pizza, a single salad and a beer. They screwed up our pizza order but eventually corrected things. We left full and re-energized. We then went Casino hopping, which is to say we hit the only other casino in town besides the one we were staying at. We visited the lounge, had a greyhound (grapefruit juice and vodka) and then made our way back to our hotel. We decided to have a night cap and hit the black-jack table. I lost $20.00 in about 5 minutes. Carole won back the $20.00 in about two minutes. We were happy to break even and call it a night. We were both looking forward to our next day in Idaho and our destination: the Dog Bark Park Inn Bed & Breakfast.
A quick note on the history of Winnemucca: It was established as a trading post in 1850. The place was called Frenchmen's Ford in those days, and served numerous Indians, Pioneers and Miners who followed the Humboldt River. In 1868, the name was changed by one of President Lincoln's map makers to honor Paiute Indian Chief Winnemucca. The chiefs name, half English and half Paiute, was bestowed on him by white prospectors who first saw the young Indian wearing only one moccasin with his other foot bare. "Mu-Cha" being the Paiute word for moccasin, the prospectors referred to him as "One a mu-cha", or "One Moccasin. The name pleased the chief and he adopted it for his own. In the same year that the city of Winnemucca took its name, the transcontinental railroad reached completion and Winnemucca became a major shipping point for cattle, sheep, gold, and silver.