I hadn’t expected the always-welcome opportunity to hang out with family on this trip, but I also didn’t expect to be riding this trip myself. I was happy to catch up with Peter and Marina, as well as my sister, Jenny, and her husband, Torben. Shortly after arriving, Peter and Marina’s oldest, Mathias conscripted me to play Legos with him, followed by water gun fights, and more Legos. Hey, works for me! The next morning Peter and Marina were hosting a small horde to celebrate their youngest’s, Soren’s, first birthday. Determined not to get in their way and also to get a jump on what would be another long day riding, I headed out fairly early.

Already in a nostalgic mood after hanging out with family, the next hour or so doubled down. Truckee and Tahoe have been frequent vacation destinations of my family since before I could remember – particularly King’s Beach and Incline Village. GG’s route was predictable, and one I’d traveled so many times before – Highway 267 out of Truckee right into King’s Beach right on the always-stunning Lake Tahoe. Somewhere between crossing the King’s Beach city limits and passing the turn offs for Speckled Street and Dolly Varden Avenue (sites of long-ago family vacations) I developed a major lump in my throat. Moments later I turned onto North Lake Boulevard (Highway 28) and passed Jason’s Beachside Grille and Coon Street, so fraught with memories… I’m not ashamed to report that tears don’t fall far behind a full-face helmet.

And that was just the beginning – the shuttered Cal-Neva at state line, and into Incline Village. Part of me – the masochistic side – wanted me to drive by the golf course where my dad played his last rounds of golf. Not this day. Time to make some new memories. I stayed on 28… and immediately hit my first construction delay of the day.

Soon enough I picked up Highway 50 on the eastern side of the lake and left the azure waters and tangled emotions behind, cresting the Carson Range at Spooner Summit before twisting down into Carson City. Maybe some day I’d plan a trip just to come back and revisit the memories I have encircling the lake. Today, though, I had a date with one of my favorite thoroughfares in the West: highway 395.

If you’re not familiar with highway 395 or if you are and wonder why a major interstate would make my Favorite Roads list, it’s not the road itself, but what the road passes through. Beginning east of Los Angeles, 395 traces its way north along the eastern edge of the Sierra mountains – this was my introduction to 395, picking it up next to the towering wall of mountains before turning off for Death Valley a few years ago. But, seriously, that’s the whole thing – Death Valley, Owen’s lakebed, Manzanar, Devil’s Postpile National Monument, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest, Bodie, and the list goes on. You have to venture off 395 to see these things, but 395 is the spine connecting them all. North of where I picked it up in Carson City, it continues on into the desert of eastern Oregon and up into Washington. This isn’t a Pacific Coast Highway kind of beauty. No, the word that comes to mind most is “desolate.” But there’s harsh beauty, heartbreaking history, and vistas that leave you breathless. That is, if you’re willing to look. Despite the dozens of pins I’ve dropped alongside the highway on my Google map, this was only the second time I’ve traveled on it.

And, in truth, out of Carson City 395 failed to instill the awe it did when I rode past the sand dunes on my left and Joshua trees on my right much further south. But then the Carson City suburbs faded away and soon enough I was tracking along Topaz Lake, with the mountains tightening in on either side and I was back in love with 395 again. The road followed the narrow river valley carved by the Walker River, and I had to pull into a vista area to marvel at the white water coursing next to the road. Fueled by the snow melt after a record-breaking snowfall, I walked the short interpretive trail explaining the geology, hydrology, and history of the river valley. That’s when the thunder started – not the weather kind, but the sound of two dozen Harleys pulling into the small rest stop. One of the riders (from the Modesto Harley’s Owners Group) told me they had come over Sonora pass on their way to spend the night at Topaz Lake. I wished them well as I headed south again.

I passed the turn off to Sonora Pass – highway 108 – without missing a beat, but a little further up I had to seriously rein in my wanderlust. Just north of Mono Lake and my turn off there’s the eastern turn off for highway 270 that leads to the ghost town of Bodie. If you don’t know about Bodie, read up on it. I visited once with my family when I was too young to appreciate it, and it has held my imagination since. Now I was just 28 miles away and the motorcycle pulled as if drawn magnetically towards the turn lane to highway 270. However, I fought the boy in me because I knew that it was more than 28 miles, as the last third of the road is washboard dirt. I didn’t have time, not today. But I’ll be back – after all, it’s on my bucket list.

Highway 395 descends precipitously towards the north end of Mono Lake and its tufa moonscape. Truth be told, the most stunning tufas (limestone deposits that bubbled up and solidified out of geothermal activity) lay further south than I would travel – chalk that up for another day. I did stop at the visitor’s center, taking in the view and interpretive center. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to procure a “Save Mono Lake” bumper sticker from their gift shop – a slogan familiar to any California child of the 80’s.

Even though the high Tioga pass beckoned, I was famished and in need of gas (having last filled up my enormous tank in Quincy the day before), so I made my way into Lee Vining. After a lazy lunch at Bodie Mike’s and some overpriced petrol, I turned onto Highway 120 towards Yosemite. I’ve  mentioned before how Smith and I had kept an eye on the plow logs for Lassen National Park, we were also keeping an eye on the opening of Tioga pass. Just days before we left we’d amended our route to follow a much more circuitous route into Yosemite resigning ourselves to the fact that, like Lassen, Tioga wouldn’t open in time for us.

In its second-latest opening in recent memory, the road had been cleared and open to traffic just a week earlier. As the road switch backed up 3000 feet to the 9,943 foot summit. The scenery became as dramatic and extreme as the climb. The high 90’s of Lee Vining gave way to lovely 60s and the trees thinned and finally disappeared as we approached the high timberline. Impromptu waterfalls flowed down the steep mountainside as the last of the snow gave way to summer heat. I stopped at one point to take a picture of a roadside waterfall below a gnarled whitebark pine.

At the summit I passed through the Yosemite East Gate and had to stop a few miles later to take pictures of the gorgeous sub-alpine Tuolumne meadows surrounded by the granite domes that characterize the area. I found a perfect cluster of lodgepole pines shading an exposed smooth granite boulder and spent some quality time listening to the wind and watching the shadows cast by the occasional high cloud track across the surrounding rock faces.

Checking my watch and the GPS, my destination for the night loomed surprisingly distant. While the climb from Lee Vining to Tioga Pass transpires in a short, steep run, the descent from the meadows down into the park (and back out, as I was heading) meandered its way through forests and along lakes. Beautiful, certainly, but stuck behind a never-ending string of SUVs and campers with the temperature rising as the elevation dropped, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated. Eventually highway 120 turns into Big Oak Flat Road and a fair number of our convoy turned off to stay in the park. We finally exited the park and left the painfully slow speed limit behind, though the bus leading our long line of cars didn’t choose to heed the higher speed. Fortunately, the road swept gracefully around a curve, straightened, and the double yellow center line turned to single dashes. I dropped two gears, opened the throttle wide, and the bus (and trailing cars) were behind me. Hallelujah!

The only firm place Smitty had booked ahead of time was the  Buck Meadows Lodge, predicting – wisely – that in the height of tourist season places in the general vicinity of Yosemite would fill up fast. And he was right – as I pulled up to the office, they prominently displayed a sign reading, “We’re all booked!” The place had a lot going for it – right on highway 120, Buck Meadows Lodge shares amenities (pool!) with its sibling property next door (the more motel-looking Yosemite Westgate Lodge), a bustling restaurant attached, and it was the closest lodging to the west Yosemite gate that didn’t require at least a two day minimum. Unfortunately for Smitty, they also had a pay-ahead, no-cancellation policy. Smitty was kind enough to explain the situation to the

front desk ahead of my arrival, so when I finally climbed off my bike in the 100 degree heat, the woman at the counter knew what was going on and pointed me to my room. Well, not a room – it was an adorable detached small cabin! I will say that cabin was fantastic – cozy, but very well set up with a mini-fridge and microwave. I point this out because when I turned the bike off in front of the cabin I cared about only three basic things: 1) functioning air conditioning (check), 2) drinkable water (right outside of Yosemite? Seriously? Check) and 3) a shower. No sooner did I get inside did I immediately climb out of my sweat-drenched gear and gratefully stand beneath the shower on full-cold. Several hours passed beneath that shower head… Okay, it felt that way at least. I got out and did my best to re-hydrate before throwing on fresh shorts, a clean shirt and heading to the restaurant.

stepping inside the door, I immediately appreciated the industrial-grade air conditioning lowering

the ambient temperature inside to blissfully cool levels. Myriad families and couples occupied the small dining room and I didn’t immediately spot a vacant table for me, but I did see the bar to my left completely deserted. The hostess confirmed I could order food in there, and within moments I’d placed an order for a slab of red meat and the bartender was pulling a giant frosted goblet of Fat Tire Ale on draught. As I waited for my dinner, I noticed the over-enthusiastic AC was actually creating small waves across the the surface of my beer. As I sat there beneath the stuffed torso of a black bear with my giant beer, I thought back on a day that began in Truckee, traveled along a resplendent  Lake Tahoe, down 395 only to cross the nearly 10,000 foot Tioga pass The bartender asked,”Everything okay?”

I took a sip of the cold beer (from the placid, non-wave-tossed side of the goblet) and responded, “Right this second, I don’t think there’s a happier person on earth.”