With the stunning weather lately has come a severe onset of wanderlust. Or maybe it’s Spring Fever? More important than actually diagnosing an idiom, let’s settle on the biggest symptom: I would so rather be out traveling than being responsible. If you asked me where I’d head if all of a sudden I came into traveling money and an abundance of free time, I’d point to the selfie I chose today.
For years – I hesitate to say decades, but it’s probably decades – I’d had a daydream of where I wanted to spend my 40th birthday. For a lot of people, that sort of milestone birthday conjures ideas of Las Vegas debauchery, or dinner at the French Laundry. That didn’t appeal to me. Instead, what I really wanted to do was spend my 40th in Death Valley on a motorcycle. As I mentioned, I’d had this dream long before I had any idea I’d even have a motorcycle again. But the idea held fast in my imagination, and as the date of my 40th appeared on my annual calendar, the stars started aligning and by October I had an epic Death Valley trip planned.
Full disclosure, I wasn’t in Death Valley on my actual birthday. No, instead my friends Jennifer and David Eric took me to the Tonga Room in San Francisco. If you haven’t been there, please go. You owe it to yourself to sip a giant rum drink while the fake thunderstorm rages over the lagoon (it’s in the Fairmont in the middle of San Francisco, so the lagoon is part of the magic). Despite the massive fruity beverages, and the boutique rum salesman who, upon finding out it was my 40th, generously provided copious samples, I woke the next morning on Halloween, my departure day, feeling great… which is more than I could say for the weather.
Bike loaded up, I sealed myself in my rain gear and headed south through a torrential downpour that didn’t abate until I hit King City. I checked the weather radar on my phone, and I had just outrun the leading edge of storm, but it was hot on my heels, and having stripped out of my rain gear at the gas station, I wanted to keep ahead all the way to my first night’s destination at my friends Mark and Cindy’s place in Arroyo Grande. I made it just in time – the storm hit the central coast a couple hours after I arrived and knocked out power so Halloween was just that much creepier… and soggier.
By morning, most of the storm had moved on, but the remaining showers meant I headed off in my rain suit again. I made a beeline for Death Valley and (after a necessary stop at Indian Wells Brewing to pick up a growler), I dropped down into Panamint Valley and immediately wanted to turn around and ride that amazing road again. But with daylight starting to wane, I still needed to cross the park and get to Nevada. On highway 190 as the road starts to climb back out towards Nevada I stopped to watch dust devils hypnotically swirling along the valley floor. I pressed on and left the park – that’s actually where the above picture is taken, after I’d ridden through the park. I didn’t take a selfie on the way in, but I got a great picture of my (still clean!) bike:
While I’m sharing pictures, just as I crossed into Nevada I got a great glimpse of the last remnant of the previous day’s storm. It was sitting over my destination, The Atomic Inn in Beatty:
I arrived without getting too soaked, wrote a little in my journal while I had some of Indian Well’s Amnesiac IPA (and was grateful the motel had a fridge!) and called it a night.
I’d given myself the entire next day to explore the park, and I gassed up in Beatty thinking the massive 320 mile range would be enough – I limped back to Beatty in the dark that day with just 20 miles of gas left. Death Valley is huge! And unbelievably alluring. I picked up the dirt Titus Canyon Road just outside the park and wound my way through and up to the ghost town of Leadfield. On the approach, I stopped, managed to find a stable place in the red earth for the kickstand and took a picture of my bike. I remember thinking as I took the picture that I couldn’t believe this same motorcycle that so ably carried me down the freeway in torrential rain could also be so ridiculously sure-footed on this dirt trail. No, it wasn’t particularly technical (though, for me at the time it was!), 
but nonetheless, the versatility just blew me away. That high gave way a few hours later when the deep pea gravel on the way to the Devil’s Racetrack swallowed the front wheel and pitched me off. I wasn’t going very fast and bike and rider suffered no damage but to my pride and a few scrapes on the engine guards. I could go on about crisscrossing the valley, but I’ll leave you with this moment: walking through the visitor’s center at Scotty’s Castle one of the rangers was watching me. I said hi, and she said, “This is your first time in Death Valley isn’t it?” I said it was and she said, “That’s too bad. I can tell it’s got you hooked already.”
Right now, writing from my desk in Guerneville, with my motorcycle tucked away in the carport (which more aptly resembles a collapsed mine shaft), I know exactly what she meant. Three and a half years later, I haven’t had the opportunity to get back to Death Valley, but I can feel the pull of the desert like a siren song. It was nearly 100 degrees in the park today – yes, of course I checked. I naturally prefer cool weather to hot, but yet the desert beckons…
What’s your siren song? Where’s the place that makes your heart speed up just thinking of it? And, crucially, when are you going back? Let me know in the comments below!
