Felt like I had seen an awful lot of parks recently, so I figured I’d do something else the USA does very well – kitsch.  Looked like a lot if miles, so I had an early start.  Probably a touch too early.  Without coffee and on gravel roads, I tried to take the Multi off the center stand.  Tipped the wrong way(away from me) and fell over.  The brake lever end snapped off – I like to think of it as an earlobe.   So the first real damage has been done.  Surprisingly, it actually feels better –  smaller on that side now.

A wind farm – not successfully farming anything.

Looping around 318, I filled up outside Alamo.  Had a nice chat with Dennis from MA.  He was in Vegas to a new addition to his extended family.  Not wanting to spend all day with a newborn, he rented an HD for the day and did a bit of riding.  We played tag with cameras, but he had a better rig and better stops.

Buddy Bison on the ‘Black Mailbox’

Saucer Burger special at Lil Ale Inn cafe.  I really need to stop eating so many burgers.

Not really having a plan after lunch, I was informed that 93 back to Vegas wasn’t worth doing.  So I thought I would go the other way and see where that took me.  Got a little lost in Tonopath, but eventually stopped for gas.  Nearing 13,500 miles, I figured I should start heading SW for my service appointment rather than cutting straight west for Yosemite.  So Death Valley it was.

Ever get the feeling that you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake and you’re about to pay heavily?   Well, in trying to find a camp site, I realized the entire place was empty.  Setting up camp, I realized there were some serious clouds moving in from the west.  I know Death Valley is in a ‘rain shadow’, but reading all those road sign warnings about flash floods and sudden storms freaked me out.  Fortunately, some other people rolled into the site shortly after.  If God protects fools, at least there was a group of us.

Sunsets with clouds are very pretty.