Free Ride

Sunday morning we were on the bikes at 7:30 for a fun ride with none of our saddlebags, camping gear, tools, or any other burden. My bike is not a "cruiser" with the larger front tire, fairings, and permanently fixed saddlebags. Mine is easily 100 pounds lighter than the Road Kings and such while still having the 96 cubic inch engine, six speed gearbox, and a rugged frame suitable for long voyages. And I can strip it down by removing the saddlebags and let it run free.

Our primary target was the Mariposa Grove of giant redwoods. From the North Pines campsite, the grove is an hour south, just past the final turn to the park entrance we had come in through on Saturday. Not only were we free of baggage, but the roads were empty at that hour. I have often said that riding a motorcycle is as close as you can get to flying without leaving the ground. On this run I felt like a peregrine falcon swooping and diving through Yosemite.

Near the south entrance there lie a gas station, a visitor center where permits are issued for the more advanced trails and rock climbing, and a classic white clapboard hotel named the . We topped off the tanks for $5.70 per gallon then headed into the hotel for breakfast. We both ordered eggs Benedict and the hollandaise sauce had a surprising peppery zing to it, about as spicy as medium salsa. We both really liked it, but I commented to the waiter that most guests appear to be older and have more docile tastes. I supposed that since the continental buffet is included with the room bed-and-breakfast style, few guests order from the menu. He checked with the chef and returned with a bottle of "Plant Sauce" telling us the chef had added this great stuff to the hollandaise today.

The previous day on our trail hike we came across this handsome fellow.

We showed it to the waiter who called over a bus boy who knew more about snakes and told us this one is a King snake. They eat rattlesnakes, which are abundant because the previous two winters were wetter than usual so there were more rodents and so on up the food chain. There is a nmemonic that is supposed to help distinguish between venomous Coral snakes that have a red stripe between yellow bands. King snakes are harmless to people, so now I will remember red-touch-black is okay and red-touch-yellow is not.

After breakfast, we rode the last few miles to the Mariposa Grove. Marty asked a ranger where to find the very largest sequoia and she told us that was the Grizzly Giant and it was .8 miles up a hiking trail from the parking lot. We were both still a bit sore from Saturday's climb to the Lower Falls, but we ignored the tender muscles and headed on up. Along the way there was a tree with an arched tunnel cut through large enough to easily fit a dozen people inside. There were also several fallen trunks about six to ten feet in diameter. Some showed the scars from fires and one had a four foot wide section cut out so the trail passed through. After photos with the great tree -- which is largest in girth, but limited in height -- we returned to the bikes and headed north.