California Here We Come - Musheads do Mushpot

She'll be riding 1300 black ponies when she comes. Hey its early and that just popped into my head. Heading out of Klamath Falls into California the landscape changes dramatically, a couple of times. At first the roads are real straight, but then turn into gentle sweepers and finally into a road ya just gotta pay attention to. (not that one should not pay attention at all times)

The straights




Our first stop we came across unexpectedly, Camp Tulelake. I had this marked, however it was an estimate, because I could not find an exact spot from my research on the Internet. I did a separate posting HERE.

Just down the road is the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge. We stopped here purely for the Blue Goose Passport stamp.

Grabbed Tulelake City Hall as a water town



Main sight today is Lava Beds. I thought this was gonna be a grab and run, but as usual I was wrong



We came in from the south. The roads has some sizable pot holes and places where the tarmac has simply disappeared. Not a problem if you are paying attention. Plenty of free roamimg cattle as well, but they were mostly looking for shade.

A view of the landscape from the Visitor Center



On the way in both of us were getting the case of the sleepies. Rising temperatures and straight roads. Stopped and had a Red Bull (goes against my medication) and when we arrived at Lava Beds we took a little snooze outside on the benches. Invigorated we decided we should take in one of their caves. You have to answer some questions and get a permit first. This free, they just wannaa make sure you won't kill off the bats in the cave.

We did Mushpot, a beginner cave for our first spelunking experience.







Found our way out of there. Not too hard, come to the end, turn around and go back. There are some caves out here that are not that easy. They have one that you nearly crawl thru and is over a mile. We decided that was for Batman and Robin.



Done with Lava Beds we head for Redding CA our end spot for the day. Off in the distance we keep seeing 2 mountains with snow on them. I assume one was Mt Shasta, the other I don't have a clue.



Grabbed a couple more water towns and decided to skip Shasta Lake as a water town. Temps were well into the 100's at this point and taking a toll on us.






Descending some mountains that got pretty twisty we came across a state cop sitting by a sign "Accident Ahead". We were stopped here for about 15 minutes and then allowed to pass. We we rounded the corner, there was a logging truck with his load dragging behind him. You could see the skidmarks all over the highway. My guess if we had not stopped for our water pictures we would have gotten to see this first hand. Just as well we didn't experience it. MeAsWe forgot to take pictures as we passed.

Last stop of the day before heading to the motel was Fat Daddy's BBQ in Redding for dinner and nailing CA as a Smoke Chasing 2011 state.



This place has dollar bills thumbtacked all over the place.



My dinner, it was very tasty.



Tomorrow we head for Reno, NV. Dang our trip is coming to an end. Only 4 days of riding left. We got a 3.5 star hotel for $30 via Priceline. We probably paid too much.