Day 2 200 Miles
Today I lounged around camp
getting the beginning website pages developed. About noon I decided to go see
how the footpegectomy was going. The welding shop is back in Lone Pine and a short
15 mile ride. It seemed to me the repair should have been about done so I broke
camp and loaded my bike expecting the repaired bike to return any time. Still
no bike, so OK, I’ll go 
check out the progress.
On the way there I couldn’t help taking a quick pic of the mountains. One of these mountains is Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48. I’m always amazed that the highest spot and lowest (Death Valley) are only 200 miles from each other.
When I got to Georges shop they were just finishing up the repair. David headed back to camp to get packed and I went looking for something to eat since it was 3:00 in the afternoon and I hadn’t had anything to eat yet. We still planned to lay down a couple of hundred miles before dark and I most likely wouldn’t be around food anymore today.
When
we left it was another scorcher and felt like over 100 but I didn’t check a
thermometer to verify.
Outside of Independence we started climbing again and after about 50 miles we were finally in the pines and the air temp dropped quite a bit. This pic is looking back at the valley below that we just climbed out of.
Heading
up 395 eventually brings you past the entrance to Yosemite, called Tioga pass.
We passed that today but due to the late start headed past without stopping.
Nearing
the Nevada border we realized there wasn’t any good camping anywhere so we
detoured a little to get into a nice camping area. The detour turned out to be
a good one. The road was a deserted winding road through the mountains and the
scenery was magnificent.
After
about a 50 mile drive on this nice road we wound up in Markleeville. That was
an interesting little town. We started out trying to get something to eat at
the only restaurant in town but you needed reservations. The hostess decided to
sit us down in the bar at a table but the bartender refused to take our food
order because he was pissed at the hostess and so we finally left. You know
your in trouble when the hostess says “I don’t know how to be a hostess”. We
headed over to the market, also the only one in town. I selected a very nice
bag of burrito with M&M’s and a nice tube of Pringles. Quite the feast!
Then came the fun part, trying to pay for it. The cashier would ring it up but
had no capability to count or work the cash register. Her first offer to me was
$24 for $10 worth of food. I countered by, well counting the little price
stickers on the food that added up to $10. She huffed and started deleting
items she had rung up but couldn’t remember which she had originally keyed in
so she just guessed at numbers. She got it down to $14 and said “is that good
enough”, and I said “No”. So she huffed again and again began deleting random
prices she may or may not have keyed in, this time she got it down to $7 for
$10 worth of food and asked if that was good and I said yes and paid. It was a nice compromise, I was happy to get
a $3 discount on food and she was happy for me to leave, since I was showing
off and doing that whole counting thing she had heard about back when she used
to do book learnin.
We eventually found a spot to camp for the night up the road and I feasted on nearly free junk food.