Five of us left on the tour from Lodi Cafe for Horseshoe Lake. Luckily Tour Captain for the day, Bob Love, showed more variation in his choice of the roads in our route than the assembled riders did in their choice of bikes; 3 R1100RS's (all red), 2 R1100RT's (both blue).
We started out on fairly tight narrow roads which, just as you thought were as narrow as they could get, got narrower. Some of them were bumpy; however stock BMW suspension coped quite well with them so they could not have been too bad. They included the Camanche Parkway and Pardee Dam, Jesus Maria and Sheep Ranch roads. The time spent on these roads was great since we encountered very few cars, the corners made life fun and the scenery was superb. Once we got onto Highway 4 things opened up a bit. The scenery and roads around Alpine Lake were particularly spectacular.
Lunch was had at the Cutthroat Saloon at Markleeville, where we also intrigued some local Harley riders by our use of full-face helmets and earplugs. In the afternoon it was over the range via Monitor Pass (passing an accident where a non-club-member rider had gone over the side of the mountain) then into Nevada and down Sweetwater Road (which affords incredible views of the valleys, mountains and Mono Lake to the south) then finally onto Highway 395 and into the camp grounds. All up 282 miles of varied, but uniformly fantastic roads. The only disappointing aspect of the ride was that there were not more riders on it. At least those there had a great time.
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