What a big week - bulk miles, countryside and sights.

I ended up spending around a week all told on Highway 1 up the Pacific coast. By the map each day, I'd hardly gone anywhere, yet every daylight hour was full. Highway 1 is magic. Given enough weeks it's easy to imagine going all the way to Canada .. or beyond.

Pebble Beach is an affluent community on the Monterey Peninsula, home to swanky golf courses and known worldwide for its concourse de elegance car show. Being a privately owned residential area, yet attracting numerous curious visitors, they charge a $12 toll to cruise "17 Mile Drive". My new best friend Chris, local park ranger and fellow dirt bike rider, showed me a back door entry via a dirt track and going around a couple of gates. Stopping for a photo of the boom gates before leaving brought furious arm waving and shouting from the hi-vis wearing guard. Oh well.

Just inland is the famous racetrack Laguna Seca. The Sports Car California Association were practising the day I dropped by. As always, racers are keen to crap on at length about their toys to strangers. I did my level best to avoid being that bore who always rocks up when you have an interesting car/bike "yeah, I've got an FB Holden at home I'm gunna restore some day. It's got a hot 186 with cams... blah blah". I tried. Plenty of hot machines, sadly no Lotus 7s.

Laguna Seca has "the corkscrew", an over-the-hill-now-where's-that-blind-apex-left-right combination that looks exciting enough with four wheels. It must be mind blowing on two wheels at warp speed. 

Santa Cruz has a huge beachside fun park, a jetty big enough to drive on, surfers, tons of fit sorts jogging, beach volleyballers showing their cheeks and families enjoying the sand. Best for me was kids playing soccer on the beach. All ages, boys + girls. Moments before this shot, the goalie made a save. Hurrah!! went the family crowd. A huge smile lit up the face of the little girl with the gloves and pigtail. Brilliant. 

I wonder if they modelled The Corkscrew on this hundred year old roller coaster?

You might have heard of this big orange bridge in San Francisco. It's rather impressive. Almost as appealing as our own Puffing Billy Trestle Bridge in Belrave. The water colour, city skyline beyond, Alcatraz in the middle - all quite easy on the eye.

What is it about a hi-vis vest that makes blokes grumpy? The carpark at the south end of the bridge was closed to public, so I quietly snuck through some orange bollards, across double lines into it. No one died. Another tounge lashing. Oh well. 

I contemplated taking a clockwise loop of San Francisco via the three main bridges. It likely would have been awesome, but by the time I got to the GG, I was sick of every bastard on the road trying to kill me, sick of changing gear, sick of getting lost.

On the plus side, it takes only moments to return to the calm of Highway 1's views and those thrilling twisty roads.

Dragging myself reluctantly inland took me across the Coastal Range, back into California's Central Valley. Miles and miles of monoculture agriculture on the flat. Lots of stomachs to fill in this country.

The mountains beckoned: firstly Lassen Volcanic NP with its bubbling sulphuric pools and steam vents. Even half way through June the main road was still snow blocked. In this shot the snowbank is about 7' high; they got up to 20' this year.

Next up, Crater Lake NP in Oregon, also a dead end due to snow, yet worth the ride. Eye popping.

Park ranger Tristan suggested camping at "Hole in the ground", a mile wide impact crater. In the dark, buggered if I could find it. Up and down the road, searching a plethora of sandy forest tracks, I gave up to camp at a nondescript public site. Blow me, come the morning the phone had service, despite being miles out. Google knew the crater was only 2.5 miles distant and exactly which unsignposted tracks to take.

Three tracks enter the crater. In my ignorance I chose the western. A mistake. Steep, sandy, rocky. A few metres in, it was obvious this was a one way trip. 18yo Gavin would have blasted down under power; forty years later, on a fully laden bike by myself, walking it down, motor off in first, using clutch for rear brake made more sense. Recommendation: use the eastern track, suitable for high clearance 4WD. "A piece of piss" as old trail riding mate Cocky would say.

Heading east across Oregon into Idaho brought a mix of countryside, starting with beef ranches then paddocks on the flat growing hay, onions, other low plants. Country towns had more places selling big ag machinery than the usual servos and supermarkets. 

The chain guard had broken through, so off to Ontario Welding and Steel Supplies. The place is a shambles, discarded metal everywhere, but boy the two old blokes running it are gentlemen. They keep three Mountain Pyrenees: Snowball, Frosty and Bear. These three woofers have streaks of grease down their thick white fur. Daughter Kim has Momo at home, a similar livestock guardian breed, so it was a nice sentimental moment.

Now I've made some bird shit welds, especially in aluminum, but nothing like this. In their defense, while the sign outside included TIG, they don't actually have one, so had to MIG it. I guess it can't be worse ... and they were so lovely, I didn't have the heart to complain. Update: the washer area around a mounting hole was left partially covered in weld reinforcement; on the first dirt road, the bolt unscrewed and I had to remove the guard anyway.

Yesterday it was back to the hills. The Payette River tumbles along, inviting a late afternoon dip. No one else around, so a cheeky little ride down the walking path and a chance to strip off. 

Boy, when that snow melt hit thermometer height it was bracing.

Riding alongside the river through a rocky valley joining Banks, Lowman and Stanley gave smiles. It would be perfect in either an open top car, or on a big cruiser. While you could fang it along here at race speed, equally you could enjoy it in a wind-in-the-hair-wow-what-a-view way.

I'm tapping from a funky cafe in Stanley, the cutest mountain town smack bang in the middle of several wilderness parks. A country artist on the radio is singing about how his girl left him for Jesus and he's gunna kick Jesus's ass. There are a million places to camp around, streams to fish, trails to hike and vistas to savour. What a great area.

The scenery is getting so familiar, it took a moment to notice the Sawtooth Range where I ate breaky earlier.

Meeting folk out of the blue continues to delight:

- discussing the ethics of graffiti, personal responsibility, family life and Suzuki speedometers over breakfast in a small town park. G'day Canyon, I know you're tuned in ... and I'm sure those Pebble Beach folk are down to earth.

- the bloke on the Harley outside a store, who spent an hour advising how to travel in Mexico. He'd just returned from an eight month tour of Mexico and Belize, as part of two years on the road. Also the only one packing a shooter on his hip to date.

- park rangers have been terrific. They know far more than just their own patch and can suggest places to stay going beyond, supplying free detailed state maps.

- the bicyclist riding from Durango to Seattle to see his son. He came up to me, cooking dinner in a town park, asking if I was local, could he camp in the park? Thirty years previous, he'd ridden to Guatemala, also tenting en route. Impressive. 

- even the eldery lady outside the supermarket who shook my hand while wishing a "god bless you"

- and many others