Wednesday October 29th, 2014
Total Miles: 245

When we woke up and it was 22 degrees.  The frost that covered the bike reconfirmed that we made the right choice to stay at the bed and breakfast.  Dawn had created a fest for breakfast.  Fresh fruit covered in yogurt, muffins and breakfast breads.  She made scrambled eggs with tons of fun toppings.  Everything from broccoli to sliced up Italian sausage.  It was scrumptious and I couldn’t stop eating it.  What a wonderful way to start our day.  We learned all about the area while having breakfast.  Dawn did warn us about the marijuana grow fields and to be aware that there are armed guards who stand watch in these areas.  She just reconfirmed that we don’t stray too far off the main dirt roads.  We packed up the bike said our good byes and headed to Oroville.

It was a beautiful drive.  As we came across the bridge we could see oodles of house boats lined up for the winter.  I had never seen anything quite like it.

We filled up fuel at the Lakeside Market.  Bathrooms where located all the way in the back of the building in the stock room.  A little awkward but no one seemed to mind.  We had another experience witnessing some tweakers.  I was just unaware what a huge drug problem Northern California continues to deal with.  We turned onto Miners Ranch Road.  We stopped to have a beer in Colfax.  We took a dirt route just outside of town.

Next up we headed to the Eldorado National Forest.  The weather was fantastic and the day was perfect.  The Eldorado National Forest was large.

We were hours into the Forest when we came across a Forestry worker.  He flagged us down and informed us that this area was closed.  They had a huge fire back in July and all the rain had caused the remaining burnt trees to become unstable.  He told us that if we get caught by law enforcement that the fine would be $5,000.  Yes, not $500 but $5,000.  According to the GPS we were only 15 miles from our turn off to head to Lake Tahoe.  If we had to turn around it would take us an additional day to get around the burnt area.  We decided to take a chance and keep moving forward.  We needed to be in Lake Tahoe by evening because a snowstorm was on our tail.  We got 10 miles further and there was a fork in the road that wasn’t shown on the GPS.  We pulled over to ask a Forestry worker which way to go and he refused to tell us.  All he said was this area was closed and you have to turn around.  Now we are only 5 miles from the turn off and there was no way we were going to turn around.  As we were chatting with this guy three white Ford Escapes pulled up.  Turns out this was the head Forestry person for the State of California.  Galen explained our situation.  She asked why we didn’t obey the road closed sign.  Here is the truth, there was no “Road Closed” sign.  Apparently they have been having issues with hunters stealing the signs.  She looked us over and finally said they were going that way.  She instructed us to pull in between their vehicles and they would escort us to our turn off on Wentworth Springs Road.   Here are some photos of our escort by the National Forest Service through the King’s Fire area.

We were roughly 30 minutes from Lake Tahoe.  As we got closer to Tahoe snow had covered the ground and the temperature began to drop.  Galen and I have been here several times and we were both excited to have dinner at The Brewery at Lake Tahoe.  We split a pizza and enjoyed some beers.  We decided to use our hotel points for the night since we hadn’t used points this whole trip.  We ended up staying at the Marriott Timber Lodge.  Pretty fancy place.  Valet parking only so Galen had to have an employee escort when he parked and retrieved the bike.  The front desk worker was less than impressed that we were on a motorcycle.  We relaxed in the hot tub and called it a night.