Sep 1 Day 16

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? - Click here for our current location !

Day 16, and we say good bye to California. I was a little worried about traffic and how difficult it might be on a holiday weekend to get out of San Francisco. Little did I know what was ahead...

Like the last two days in San Francisco, this morning was chilly, and breezy. We packed the bike and trailer and headed off toward down town. The first part of our route took us over the San Francisco Bay Bridge. As you can see in the photo below, this is a multi-deck bridge. We were heading out of the city, and traveled on the lower deck, while those coming into the city were traveling on the upper deck. Fortunately, they only collect tolls for those coming into the city.

Surprisingly, traffic was very easy getting out of San Fran, and even passing through Oakland. But once outside of Oakland, things came to a grinding halt. We suffered through stop and go traffic for over an hour. Unfortunately we also had to cross another toll bridge, the Carquiniz Bridge just south of Vallejo CA. Like the Golden Gate Bridge, we were considered a 3 axle vehicle, and got to pay $15.00 while the cars paid $5.oo. Traffic was backed up for a couple miles before the toll booths !! I think everyone was trying to get "out of town" for the long weekend.

I hate waiting at toll booths !!!

I have no idea... Lennie took the photo, and I thought it was amusing enough that it needed to be posted ???

Making our way to Reno took us through Sacramento CA. Once past Sacramento, we started to see some elevation changes, and the terrain became more rugged.

We climbed up and over Donner Pass, which is just to the west of Truckee CA. Donner Pass peaks at about 7200 feet. Not an exceptionally high pass, but very scenic. By now the temps have moved up into the 80's for the day.

On our run down the downhill side of Donner Pass, we ran into these 5 Corvettes traveling together. They all had CB antennas strapped to their trunk lid so they could communicate. All 5 Vettes had stickers in the window that said "Diablo Valley Corvettes". Didn't think much about it...

Then we saw this fellow following them. Now I was really confused. Do those Vette drivers need a support group to help them cope with the fact that they bought a Vette? Not quite sure how to interpret this "support" vehicle thingy... :)

We continued to drop down the east side of Donner Pass. There was a fair amount of traffic, but not too bad.

This area of had a train rail and stream running through the canyon. Really scenic through here.

Not sure what this is all about, but it was dumping a fairly large amount of water down the hillside.

You can see below, that we are just a couple of miles from the Reno exit.

We are here. Reno and Lake Tahoe will be home for the next two days.

Nothing like the Vegas strip, but there are a nuber of hotels in the area.

What can you say to that?

Past the Horseshoe, and around the corner...

And we arrive at Harrah's, our home while in Reno.

Tomorrow we plan to take a drive around Lake Tahoe.

Today, we traveled 226 miles from San Francisco CA to Reno NV. This brings the trip total to 3784 miles. Below is a map of the route from today.