All packed up
Then I headed home, where I loaded clothes, kitchen supplies, tools, mountain biking stuff, all-weather gear, autocrossing stuff, reading material, food, etc into the motorhome. I must have made 20 trips between the house and the motorhome loading it up.
I also made some tentative route plans for my first week. Tomorrow morning I'll take off, and head for Davis, where La Mesa RV, the dealership I bought the motorhome, is. We had a bit of a problem getting the license plates for this thing from the California DMV, and today they finally got it done. They are at the dealership, so I'll pick them up on my way out of town. I'd be legal without them, but it seems like an invitation to be pulled over, and I hate getting pulled over :-)
After the stop in Davis, it's the fun (and probably quite slow) trip up over Donner Summit on I-80. That's a 7,000+ foot pass near Lake Tahoe. But I've decided to skip any California attractions, since I can easily do those on a weekend jaunt in the future. I'm planning on making it past Reno, then cut over to US-50 ("the loneliest road in America"), and spend the night in an RV Park in Austin, NV. There are some sights to see along the way. I'll let you know about what I see and where I stop in the next installment of this journal.
Sunday, I'll leave Austin and head to Utah. Lots of neat stuff to see in Eastern NV, around Ely, so I don't intend to make it too far into Utah. I figure I'll spend the night somewhere near the I-15/I-70 interchange on Sunday night.
Monday, it's off to Moab, UT, which is supposed to be Mountain Biking Mecca. Tons of "slickrock", which is anything but slick. Apparently you can climb incredibly steep hills that are made of this stuff. In the same neighborhood is Arches National Park, with lots of natural sandstone arches. Sounds neat. I'll take pictures.
I'll stay in Moab until Wednesday, when I'll head to Colorado. I'm not yet sure where I'll stop in Colorado, maybe Pikes Peak. Always wanted to go up the hillclimb route.
Then Thursday, it's off to Kansas. I figure I'll do some stuff in Colorado until lunchtime or so, then head east, pulling into "Solo City" (that's the makeshift RV Park just outside the gates at the Solo II Nationals in Topeka) late at night.
Then it's 8 full days hanging out in beatiful Topeka. With any luck, I'll win a National Championship on Wednesday. That's the plan :-)