My son, David, and I had been talking about my dream of riding the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge for years.
The first plan was just the Los Angeles–San Francisco/Golden Gate Bridge–Los Angeles roundtrip, with a side trip to Yosemite thrown in. But then we ended up throwing in Bryce Canyon, Utah, and Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, for good luck!
I finally booked us flights to Los Angeles and from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Los Angeles and then back home. I hired a Harley Davidson Heritage Softtail (it had to be a Harley!) to be picked up in Los Angeles and dropped off in Jackson Hole.
When I first laid eyes on the bike, I panicked—it was huge! Long, wide, heavy and low. I had a real crisis of confidence. I seriously doubted that I would be able to handle it. David sent me off down the road on my own to give it a shot and get a feel of the bike. It turned out to be easier to handle than it looked and much less intimidating, so we loaded up and set off into the maelstrom that is Los Angeles traffic.
The early stages of the trip were painfully hard work for me, and just painful for David. The pillion seat on the bike was small and none too comfortable, and David needed a break every 45 minutes or so at the most. For me, the problem was the strangeness of the bike, so different to anything I had really ridden. I was fighting the bike, trying to get it to behave like my bike—a Yamaha Thundercat—rather than accepting the differences and working with them. And I was fretting about how little progress we were making, rather than just enjoying the experience.
We arrived at Santa Barbara as the sun was setting and decided to call it a day.
Saturday morning we headed out on Highway 1 again. Somewhere along this stretch something clicked in me, and I started to relax, to go with the flow, to enjoy the enforced stops and to work with the bike rather than fight it.
And then there was Big Sur. As the guidebook says, “Big Sur is an experience rather than one tangible place. Its beauty is awe inspiring”. And it is right. This is the stretch where the road hugs the coast, ranging from almost sea level to hundreds of feet up a cliff with the surf crashing below. The scenery was stunning, the road a joy to ride, the weather perfect.
We stopped for the night at Monterey. We had had a long day in the saddle and needed the rest.
We had an easy ride to San Francisco on Sunday afternoon and spent the next morning taking in some of the city sights before heading out to the Golden Gate Bridge. A quick run out to the bridge, a few photos and it was time to head off again. Back through San Francisco (bad timing—rush hour!), across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and Berkeley and head for Yosemite, which is about 150 miles east of San Francisco. We made it to Merced, a little place about half way to Yosemite.
Our plan for the Tuesday was to ride into Yosemite National Park, into and back out of Yosemite Valley, and then cross over the Sierra Nevada mountain range on Highway 120, which runs through the middle of the park.
The park was spectacular! And not too full of tourists, as it was still early in the season. We just wandered along the road through the park, riding slowly with our visors open to drink in the smells and the sights, stopping often to take photos.
But crossing the Sierra Nevada proved to be a challenge. Highway 120 was closed by snow (in June!) and we had to backtrack nearly 60 miles to pick up Highway 108, over the Sonora Pass which is nearly 10,000 feet!
We had left it late; the sun set as we reached the top of the pass and the temperature dropped like a stone. And there was nowhere to stop. We had to push on to Bridgeport, by which time the bike was running on fumes and I was frozen to the core. We checked into the first motel we came to and I stood under a hot shower for ages to warm up.
Wednesday was our longest, most punishing day in the saddle, much of it on Highway 6. This is known as ‘the loneliest road in America’—and I can believe it. The road seemed to consist of a series of 20- or 30-mile straights, with the odd twisty bit in between, and about 100 miles between ‘towns’. And these ‘towns’ often consisted of not much more than a staging post—a motel and a petrol station (usually with one pump!).
And a constant headwind blowing out of the desert towards the Sierra Nevada mountains. My hands were cramped ‘claws’ every time we stopped, from hanging on for dear life!
We finally reached Ely, tired, windblown and in need of sustenance. We had covered about 320 miles in the day.
Thursday we made it to a little town called Panguitch, a stepping off point for visiting Bryce Canyon. Friday morning we visited the park and it was worth the effort, the canyon is surreal, all oranges, yellows and ochres. From Bryce we followed back roads north, towards Salt Lake City, before hitting Interstate 15.
Saturday morning we set out north out of Salt Lake City. The road was nothing special, until we approached Bear Lake, where it wound its way down a steep scarp. Which would have been fine, except the whole length of the descent was being resurfaced and was a dirt track. And to cap it all, they had just sprayed it with water to keep the dust down! Downhill, on slippery mud overlaying a loose surface, on a motorcycle! Not fun.
The rest of the day’s travel was pretty uneventful and we stopped for the night at Montpellier, Idaho.
It was only a short hop to Jackson, barely a hundred miles, so we set of mid-morning on the Sunday and took it easy. We rolled up to the motel around lunch time, booked in and went for a wander into the town. There’s not much to Jackson, gift shops (tacky), art galleries (expensive), bars (over 21, with ID, only), hotels and estate agents (very, very expensive, Sotheby’s and the like).
We set off for Yellowstone early Monday morning, because it is a quite a long way from Jackson—about 70 miles to the southern park entrance, and then over 100 miles to do the ‘short’ loop in the park itself, then 70 miles ‘home’ again.
Everywhere you looked there was wildlife. Deer, bison, eagles (we saw an osprey fly over with a fish in its talons), beaver etc. Being on a motorcycle, rather than in a car, you get the full benefit of all the scents—the pine forest, the sulphurous springs, the road kill. We saw several elk—our red deer—that had been killed on the road, and generally it was the smell that warned us first. Phew!
We did all the usual sights, including Old Faithful and the various mud pools and the like.
With the afternoon drawing in, we set off for ‘home’, hoping that the weather would hold. It didn’t. We got caught in a torrential hail storm and did precisely what everyone tells you not to do—we took shelter under the trees.
By the time the hail storm had passed, it was getting well dark and the temperature was falling. We were pretty much the only vehicle on the road by this time. We got to see a lot of wildlife on the way, even a pack of wolves camping out on the road. But it did make for some tense riding. Hitting an elk or bison in a car would wreck the car, hitting one on the bike would wreck us and seriously spoil our day! At least the lights on the Harley were good.
We got back to the motel at about 11 p.m., having left at about 9 in the morning—a long day in the saddle, but we enjoyed every minute.
Our last day in Jackson we went fishing on a tributary of the Snake River. Interesting ride down to the stream along a rutted gravel track—not ideal Harley territory!).
Wednesday morning we took the Harley for one brief run through Jackson before dropping it off at the hire agency and catching our flight back to LA and then home.
Altogether, we had covered about 2500 miles in the 12 days we had the bike, and travelled through five states. We went through some real lows, especially the first couple of days before we got in tune with the bike, and hit some real highs. We baked crossing Nevada and froze in the Sierra Nevada mountains and in Yellowstone Park. We met some strange characters along the way. And I would do it again tomorrow if I had the chance!