MOTOCACHING THE GOLDEN STATE - part 3

Kern County

More Kern County

Tulare County

I had my heart (stomach maybe) set on a Subway flatbread breakfast sandwich but they didn’t open until 7:00 and I didn’t want to wait that long.  I picked up one more cache at a bridge in town and then headed east on Highway 198.  I was riding right into the sun but it wasn’t too bad.  I’ll take that over rain. I picked up two out of a series of caches with “Jackson” in the name that I had chosen in honor of my grandson by that name who had accompanied me on some epic camping/Geocaching adventures and that took care of Kings County.  I then jogged south and east into Tulare County which reminded me of Idaho farm country.  I picked up two more caches along the way.  After proceeding south a ways on Highway 65 I took the wonderful Highway 155 up to Isabella Lake.  Along the way I stopped for a couple of caches in Kern County.  I was going to duplicate this section of my route on the return trip but it was such great riding that I didn’t mind at all.  At Lake Isabella I took Hwy 178 over to Hwy 14 which headed south.  Around Koehn Lake I took the Redrock-Randsburg Road east over to Randsburg.  This is desolate country similar to Nevada and I was running low on gas.  At this intersection I was fortunate to meet one of the few vehicles on the road.   He seemed to be some sort of utility worker in a pickup and I flagged him down.  He said there was gas the other side of Randsburg on Hwy 395.  Randsburg is in the middle of nowhere and is a really neat ghost town where I got some pictures. 

Randsburg

Randsburg

Randsburg

At Randsburg I got on Hwy 395 south until in merged into I-15 south of Victorvillle.  Now I hit the terrible winds of San Bernardino County.  It was just like last year when I made a foray into that county on my Arizona trip.  This was also the worst traffic of my trip with a lot of waiting probably due to being around 5:00.  I was tempted to split lanes as motorcycles are allowed to in CA but my luggage bags stick out so far I was afraid I might bump a car.  Actually the next morning I did get up enough nerve to slowly do some lane splitting when the traffic was stopped.

Quality Inn boulder walk

One of the two challenge caches for the California counties (Discovering & Logging California's 58 Counties) was located in Lake Elsinore which is why I chose to stay there for the night.  To get credit for the cache you have to submit a list of a cache you’ve found for each county and sign the log book for that physical cache.  Like many, it is totally impractical for me to sign the log after I’ve done all the counties so I sign the log when I’m in the area but don’t log it on line until I’ve completed the requirements.  After checking in at the Quality Inn I discovered that the cache was located nearby.  The person who signed the log before me had noted that the log book was missing and the container was full of water with no lid which he had repaired.  I found the same situation so I repaired it as best I could and notified the owner. 

I was glad this day was over as I had been on the road 11 ½ hours and covered 400 miles in addition to all the stops I’d make.  The Quality Inn was a nice place except I didn’t have any hot water – just luke warm.  After reporting it they reset the hot water tank and fixed it but that was a little late for my shower.  One interesting feature was what appeared to be sunken boulders in place of walks.  To be continued.  M/W