Riding Across the Sierra Nevada Mountains

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I rode through the southern grasslands , the deserts Death Valley through a lot of heat , through a lot of rain .

Now , I find myself where I camped last night here , Alabama Hills , an absolutely beautiful place to spend the evening .

I slept the best that I've slept yet on this trip this morning , I've just been lounging around the campsite , packing up my gear , getting ready for another day on the road , carrying everything I need to live off my motorcycle for a couple months at a time and that includes camping gear , cooking gear and of course , all of my film making gear .

I hope that you guys find this series to be entertaining and educational and I welcome you to follow me for another day's adventure .

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It must have rained recently because it just smells beautiful .

That's one of the things I love about motorcycling is that you just get to smell things along the way .

You become a little bit more immersed in the environment I got off the main highway and thought I would take some back roads .

So now I'm driving down a sandy track through the flat lands here .

And when I say sandy , it is sandy and here's some ruts .

Well , it is just a beautiful day for motorcycling .

Summertime weather .

72 degrees eastern side of the Sierra is absolutely a gorgeous day .

I woke up this morning in Alabama Hills , which is on highway 395 down by Lone Pine and Highway 395 is the highway that goes north and south on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range .

And as far as highways go , I don't usually like to take highways or certainly not interstates .

But highway 395 is an exception .

It's an exceptionally beautiful road .

In many cases , it's a divided highway .

So two lanes going north , two lanes going south .

And so I'm never riding against oncoming traffic .

There's always a passing lane , there's not a lot of truck traffic and there's just beautiful scenery all around .

So I really do enjoy riding highway 395 and it's kind of the main north south route and these mountains over here to the left , there's limited opportunities to cross over them .

There are certainly high mountain passes that go , they can be separated by hundreds of miles .

And so you really have to choose which side of the mountains you want to ride on or make sure that you're riding during a time of the year when the passes are open and many of them don't open until June .

So they could or should hopefully be open now , getting into late June .

So I was sitting here at this little pull out south of Mono Lake and making some decisions about where I might want to go .

And I decided , you know what I've got the time .

Why don't I actually ride a pass over the Sierra Nevadas head north and ride back over in another direction .

So we're going to get two rides out of this one going to the west over the Sierra Nevadas and then one coming back east , that's the beauty of this kind of travel , the freedom that it offers to those who are prepared and carry what they need .

So , here we go .

I am right at the base of the Sierra Nevadas right now and it just starts going up in elevation from here .

You can see there's a stream with flowing water that snow melt .

And I imagine when we get up there , we'll see some snow .

Let's get on the road and head up into the Sierra Nevadas .

Here we go up into the Sierra Nevada mountains .

I figured , you know why , ride alongside of them all day ?

Let's just go up in that .

So we'll get up into some beautiful high mountain country .

It'll be nice and cool up there and forested .

We'll find a really nice place to spend the night .

Hopefully by a mountain lake .

I like to keep this trip changing .

We've seen some beautiful desert scenery so far .

So now we'll go up into the forest at alpine country .

I got the go pro mounted on my mono pod on the back .

So you should get a good overview of the scenery as we drive up this road .

We're at 7000 ft of elevation right now .

Yeah , all of the snow from last winter has melted at least to this point .

We'll see how it is up ahead .

You can still see some of it on the mountain in the distance up there .

Sometimes that snow can stay up there until pretty late in the year , like late July and this road that we're going to be going on over the past is rated G one on the Butler motorcycle maps and that's their highest rating .

The gold standard of paved motorcycle roads , twisting , turning , well engineered , good scenery .

Everything that you want on your good paved motorcycle riding road .

I believe this is the pass one pass to the north of Yosemite .

There's only so many ways you can get across these mountains here and they all involve going up and over high passes that are closed in the winter time .

Sonora pass ahead , steep and narrow .

We're getting into some good twist here .

We're getting pretty close to the tree line .

Now , you can see up on these mountains up ahead .

There's no trees up there .

Oh , yeah , this is lovely country and look at all the snow over here , patches all over the place , man .

This is a good road .

Thanks , Butler Maps for recommending this one .

I don't think I've been down it before .

That's what I'm doing right now is going down Stanislaw Pass Highway 108 Sierra , Nevada Mountains of California .

It , your perfect day of motorcycling .

It's having fun mostly on the pavement today .

It's been a spectacular day of riding as you guys have seen .

I'm at this reservoir and I rolled in before sundown and I've just parked right off the side of the road .

There's actually a campground up the way .

But , you know , there was a couple of spots left , but I decided I'd rather be right here next to the lake all by myself .

It's going to be a little quieter .

It's peaceful .

I'm actually going to go for a quick dip in the lake .

Oh , yeah .

I'm really looking forward to cooking a hot meal tonight and drinking a little wine and just having a relaxing chill evening here .

This is gonna be really nice .

What am I going to cook up today ?

You might be asking chicken Ramen noodle soup .

We'll put some real chicken in there too .

We've got a couple little zucchinis , some sesame oil that smells good .

Sesame oil .

I'll let these zucchinis cook up a little bit and then I'll throw the chicken in there and some spices and we'll cook up the noodles separately .

Mix it all together , have a glass of wine and call it a meal .

I figured out that I can attach my little table to my pan ears here .

So I have the ability to stand up when I cook , which is a little bit nicer .

Not the sturdiest thing in the world yet .

You got to try new things and keep yourself entertained .

When you're out here in the back country , I'm gonna put some of this new Sriracha salt on there too .

Give it a little extra kick .

Maybe just a little bit more sesame oil as well because it's so good .

I think those are about done .

I'm going to cook up some water now just enough to fill up my noodles here and I'll put a lid on it because that makes it boil faster and we can save our fuel .

What a great spot to be cooking a meal after a good day's ride .

Get everything I need for a good night .

A couple of little bottles of wine , a hot meal , a Hammock by the lake .

Not too bad for day five , a packet of ramen can go a long ways when you add some extra spices and some fresh vegetables .

And I will say I like having this little camping table up here at standing level height and you know , obviously it's a work in progress .

I just came up with this literally tonight on the side of the road .

But I want to improvise and make it better like my mono pod here , which I really like .

I'm using it for so many different things on this trip .

Go pros to get that view over my shoulder .

Throw my mirror camera on it when I stand by the side of the road and I want to talk hanging in the camp kitchen , my motorcycle jacket , my helmet , I've strung a clothes line from it .

There's literally so many different things that this can be used for and it's all about that principle of keeping yourself elevated .

Keep yourself up off the ground .

Have a better time .

Bone appetite .