Seeing California - days 1 & 2

Yesterday was my first sighseeing day in California.

Remembering the cold saturday evening, I prepared myself for colder weather - and it was the right decision. Wind and ocean waves brought a lof of cold, so I used all warm clothes I brought with me. The lowest temperature was 46 F (8 C) - luckilly it was warmer when I get off the coast.

Sign in Crescent City showing sizes of tsunami

Waves on the coast of Pacific Ocean

 

Redwood National Park is located along the coast and has a length of aprx. 41 miles / 66 km. I focused on driving thru and seeing most interesting bjects - i.e. like drive thru tree and the biggest tree.

 

Yes, both motorcyle and myself fit in ;-)

Myself  and Big Tree (92.6 m heights, 1500 years)

Then I continued south and I reachd the Avenue of Giants - aprox. 30 miles / 48 km, where the biggest and the oldest sequoia trees are located. It was much more toursits here tough...

Old sequoia - you can see the size of it !

After these trips I had a long trip east - and this time weather set meven more extreme conditions. Temperatur was in range 100-104 F (38 - 41 C) - after 4 hours of driving I reached the motel really tired. My plans consider to see places where temperatur is over 110 F ( 43 C) - I am not sure if my body is ready for such heat ...

Today I started the day very early - I was considered about weather as temperatur was already 70 F (21 C ) at 6.00. My first place was Lassen vulcanic national park. This place is increadible as one can see both vulcanic activities (warm and still smell with sulphur) and few metres away a beatiful green grass and trees. I consider coming to this place once more and hike to the vulcanic hill - today it was too hot and so I decided to cruise and admire from driver perspective.

Summit Lake 

 

I reached this place on motorcycle - 2594 m !

Peak of the vulcano is 10457 ft / 3187 m high

Helen Lake - nearby the vulcano peak

After vulcano eruption glacier were present here - and they are responsible for leaving such "not fitting" pieces of landscape

 

Mega cone founded on my way

Then I drove to Lake Tahoe - it is located at 6225 ft / 1897 m  and is the highest lake of such size  in USA. I heard a lot about this place and wanted to verify by mysef how do I like it.
And... I have mixed feelings. The lake is huge (road around has 72 miles / 115 km) and it is fully utilized for commercial and touristic purpouses. There are a lot of houses here with fantastic panorama views of the lake - due to this there is limited numer of public access places and these are crowded.
The lake itself looks amazing and I believe one get a much better feeling when renting a boat and being on the lake where crowd is much smaller then on the coast.

Panorama of Lake Tahoe from western side (Nevada state)

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Kilometers:
sunday July 21st:       309 mil / 494 km, from start 4993 mile / 7989 km
monday, July 22nd:   302 mil / 483 km, from start 5295 mil / 8472 km


Ps. Coming 4 days will be very packed - I need to be in Los Angelese by Friday night, my motorcycle will have the scheduled service on Saturday morning.