Day seventy two, burney, ca to Chico, ca.

The weather app on my iPhone told me it was 6 degrees in Burney when the alarm went off this morning. Sunny California eh? Yeah right.

To be fair, by the time we had popped in to glance over the breakfast offerings at the Green Cables, politely closed the door and gone next door to MCD, by the time we gassed up and left it was actually a mild 13.5 degrees.

We headed back to the very scenic route 89 up the road a piece and followed this into the Lassen Volcanic National Park, about 30 miles from Burney.

Burney sits at about 3500’ asl and as we gently weaved our way to the summit of the Lassen Volcanic public road, it topped out at 8500’ asl. With the mountain towering another 2000’ above you, there was still snow on the side of the road left over from last winter. Amazing to see snow in California at 8500’ when on the Beartooth and Independence Pass in Colorado and Wyoming, there was no snow at over 10,000’. There ya go eh, only in California. There’s even bubbling mud pools up in Lassen like Rotorua!

Another useless bit of Trivia that intrigued me is that on Route 89, say under 4000’, the native ground cover is Ponderosa Pine, Millions of them, but once you are riding above that, the native ground cover changes to blue and green Spruce trees, grow like a weed, thousands of them, seedlings thick as Manuka on the side of the road. Some of the old Spruce’s have old granddaddy moss hanging off the branches for much of the height of the tree. On our 72 days of riding across , now 30 states, this is the first time I have seen blue Spruce as the native ground cover, let alone in an alpine area.

Awesome eh, just some trivia for you to digest !!

Have posted some pics of the scenery through Lassen Volcanic, it was a gorgeous ride and up there with some of the nicest scenery we have seen on the trip, a very relaxing ride with plenty to see. Bryn had to give way to 3 deer again, I had a close call with a fawn. Coldest it got all day was 12 then 10 up near the summit of the Lassen road but not for long, it warmed up quickly as we descended the 89 on the south side of the park. It was 32 when we arrived in Chico, just saying………….

By and By we left the park , still on Route 89, one of California’s motorcycling honeys of a road and highly recommended.

Chico was our destination for the night so we left the 89 and turned down Route 32, the Deer Creek Highway, taken from the best motorcycling roads in California, the deer creek highway to or from Chico is one of those must do rides if you are cruising around north western California. It is 100 kms of motorcycling nirvana, in a valley, River, trees, no traffic, you know the drill, a great ride.

Bryn caught a puncture on the hire bike on the last 10 kms before we dropped into Chico so we had to do a roadside repair and cruise into town on a tubeless plug repair, but all good, looking at a new tyre from the Harley shop tommorrow. Dodged a bullet, it happening so close to the end of the day and so close to town! Consensus was today, the entire ride was great riding in terms of motorcycling roads and totally awesome scenery, again, very different to what we have encountered to date. If motorcyclists doing California choose to overlook Route 89 through Lassen, do so at your peril, it is a beaut ride, go do it, and head up there from Chico just so you can ride the 32, the Deer Creek highway, go on, get into it.