Over the top from Nevada to the California coast

Yesterday I rode 525k from Ely, Nevada to Bridgeport, California.  As I left early there was very little traffic on Hwy. 6 so I admired the beauty of the sparse scenery while listening to Bach through my headset.  I quite literally had the road to myself; I measured one stretch of 22k without meeting another vehicle.  At one point I stopped, stood in the middle of the road and took the following two pictures; the first pointing west and the second east. In both pictures the road runs off to a point on the horizon at the foot of another mountain range.

I arrived at the Brideport Inn in the middle of the afternoon and walked the main street on which one finds this beautiful court house building.

 The Inn which was built in 1877 has been modernized somewhat, though the rooms on the second floor where I stayed share baths; that is, all the 12 rooms share 2 bathrooms at the end of the hallway. The inn's dining room was a disappointment.  I had thought that the Prime Rib Roast, the house specialty, would be a sure bet. Boy, was I wrong. It was tasteless, tough and expensive. Even the garlic bread that was brought at the same time as the entrée was bad; white sliced bread smeared with butter and garlic and grilled on the hot plate. I skipped desert.

I left Bridgeport at 6:40 this morning and followed 395 and 108 up and over Yosemite National Park. The temperature was 9 celsius. 108 is a steep winding road with grades of over 26 degrees at places. As I made a sharp right climbing hairpin turn nearing the 9,628 foot high point of the Sonora Pass, I caught four deer running alongside the road in the corner of my eye. Funny how you can see things when you're riding at 15 kph. Needless to say the views from up there are very impressive.

 This is a picture of a man-made reservoir. You can see the dam in the top left corner.

As I rode down toward the interior of California the temperature rose steadily and reached 39 degrees.  I passed huge orchards and farms where, at one point, a large number of field workers were picking a crop of some kind. How they could do that work under the blazing sun is beyond me.

Finally I arrived in Monterey where I stopped to walk out onto the fisherman's wharf where I saw these two characters waiting for a handout.

These interesting barrows are used to move the catch from the fishing boats to the warehouses on the wharf.

And those specks that you can hardly make out in the next picture are fishing vessels just off the coast about half way between Monterey Bay and Big Sur.

All and all another long but very interesting day of riding. After 611k I arrived at the Days Inn in King City. The last part of today's ride took me inland from Carmel by the Sea through the Carmel Valley to Greenfield.  A road that went from two-lane perfection to winding narrow somewhat paved path and back again. At the Greenfield end of what is called Route G16 I rode by extensive vineyards that dotted the valley on either side of the road and that stood out dark green against the otherwise yellow parched landscape.