Date: 08/08
City: Chico, California
Miles ridden: 220
Cumulative miles: 9724

Today started a bit earlier – around 9:45am – as we had a long day planned. 180 miles, no GPS….

We followed the California 49 for a while; the road was in good condition. After a T- junction, the road started to deteriorate slowly, so we thought we stop, particular after the expected lake appeared on the wrong side of the road. Ok, this was a minor detour to our route, just to see how beautiful the landscape was in the opposite direction…. Well, that added ~ 40miles to our trip but we found a very nice coffee shop/pub at the Sly park resort.

After we had a coffee and cooled down in the shade for a moment, we got back onto the bikes and followed the direction the shop keeper gave us, eventually making it back onto our track. The road was nice again and the landscape consistently changing. At one place, the landscape looked like India, with a winding road on the side of the steep green hill and a river at the bottom of the valley. After turning a corner in this remote area, there was suddenly a big town. By this time it was really warm, it must have been around 100F again. We kept going and turned right somewhere to make another adjustment to our route. After 10 miles…Whoops, that looked wrong again….. We stopped at a petrol station/super market in the middle of nowhere, got the map out while hiding in a shady place. The owner came out to see us; he saw the Australian flag and wanted to talk to us. We talked a bit and he gave us some pointers how to get to the highway that lead to Chico. So we had been on the right road – sort of… Finally we got onto Highway 99 and we arrived in Chico around 16:00. Sigrid hopped into the pool, I hooked up all our electronics and got the info for Garmin. Sigrid called Garmin- again – 3^rd time lucky…- and after some discussion they send a new unit out. It was too late for an overnight delivery, so we would get it on Friday. We booked the room for 2 more days and then we went to the Sierra Nevada Brewery (via Taxi) for a meal and some beer sampling.

The meals and the sampling were great. They had 19 beers to taste from and you can order 4 samples at a time.

The whole atmosphere was really enjoyable and I liked the setup

We went home around 21:00 via taxi. What a day!

The next day we did some housekeeping. I ordered matching locks for my new panniers, so the same key would fit all panniers. We organized the shipping of our box with Sigrid’s helmet and some other bits and pieces to Australia, organized some spare bulbs and Sigrid’s tank breathing valve. All of the sudden it was afternoon and very hot again, so we made our way to the Bidwell park, which is a long recreational park along a river. We parked the bikes and tried our packsafe net for the first time.

It took a while before we managed to get everything into the net. We will need that frequently in Central/South America to prevent getting our camping gear pinched from the pillion seat. Now it was time to have a look at the river. The setup was nice and surprisingly big. There were multiple green shady areas with tables and benches along the river.

A second, even bigger part of the park was a bit further north. So we had a dip in the river, dried a bit and went then to buy some groceries. On the way we stumbled over a Mexican food truck in a parking lot, which was reasonably priced. So we gave it a shot and it was quite yummy. Arriving at the hotel, we went straight to the pool, which is really refreshing at these temperatures.

The next day we were really just waiting for the locks and the replacement GPS should arrive. We planned to go to the Lessen National Park, which is a lake in a volcano. During the morning we realised that the air was a bit smoky, so I had a look at the park web site and found out that most of the park was closed due to a fire. So we gave that a miss – we can watch bushfires at home…
The locks and the GPS arrived, so we did some maintenance on the bikes instead. In the afternoon we sent the broken unit back and did some of sightseeing in the city.

When we got home we started to pack the bikes so we would have an early start tomorrow, time to get back on the road! 😀