When last we left you guys were staying in Auburn, CA with the wonderful Chris and Linda. On Thursday, the 10th of June we left Auburn after having a great breakfast and meeting a “bitchin’ ‘ol dodger” named Scotty. We passed over the second highest bridge in the country, went down and back up hundreds of feet and pushed on until we got to Placerville.

In Placerville we stopped for some local ice cream and took in the sights. We tried to find lunch meat - gave up; tried to find a sandwhich shop - gave up; and eventually settled on Chuck’s Diner just out of town. It was a late lunch and a bad choice, but it was food nonetheless.

More uphill, a brief trek on US-50, another brief trek on a half built bike path, and then a longer trek again on US-50 until we got onto a Pony Express Trail for awhile and eventually ended up at Jenkinson Lake where we camped in a state park for the evening. With some good beers and a soup dinner we laid our heads to rest that night, not knowing what was in store for the days to come!

The next day we had planned that we would bike on a road called The Mormon-Emmigrant Trail, which was an old logging road. We rode right past a couple tilted “Road Closed Ahead” signs that were lying off the side of the road at the bottom of the mountain and pressed on into the day. Along the way we walked when we needed to and drank plenty of water, and before we knew it we were at 6,400 ft and just about done for the day. We threw the bikes down (gently of course…) and stuck out our thumbs to the next car we heard.

The next car happened to be a Highway Patrol Officer and the trooper told us not 5 miles up the road it was covered in snow and impassible to get to highway 88. Instead of offering us a ride back down the mountain, he more or less insisted on us getting a cab ride, so we took the bait and had lunch, waiting for a cab to come 20 miles upa mountain for us.

Quite a depressing and expensive cab ride later we were at our dingy hotel in South Lake Tahoe; beaten, bruised, defeated and hungry! We got some great pizza with “Hella Tight Buffalo Chips” on the side, watched Say Yes To The Dress and fell asleep after utilizing our “in-room spa” - which turned out to be a stand up shower, that sort of worked.

At this point we were looking into ways of not having to deal with The Rockies. All the rental car companies seemed to charge a lot for out-of-state one way trips, so we decided to just get to a hotel in Carson City, NV and figure things out there. South Lake Tahoe, including our hotel seemed just trashy and we needed a change of scenery. Evan was also coming down with a case of altitude sickness from the previous days climb and a lower elevation city seemed like the way to go.

Nicole and I both liked Carson City much better then South Lake Tahoe, so we took two nights there and Evan recooperated from his illness.

Evan’s parents also helped us figure out that we could take the amtrak from Reno at a reasonable price with our bikes, so we jumped for it.

Unfortunately Reno proved itself the most awful city on the trip so far, just within the three hours we were in it! Evan got doored on the first bike path we found (as if altitude sickness weren’t enough to deal with), the casinos were everywhere and the people seemed foreign and sickly. We got on that amtrak asquickly as we could.

The ride was interesting, not so comfortable, but interesting. We met Marshall and Maria, fellow bike tourists hailing from San Francisco and on their way to Detroit, Michigan. It was funny meeting tourists that were in a similar state as us, on a budget and carrying way more gear then we want to! Before getting off the train we also talked with a retired guy who does a lot of backpacking on the Appalachain Trail and he had all sorts of neat information to share about where we were on the train and also just getting by on the road.

So we’re updating from the business center in The Garden-Hilton Inn in Denver, CO. While we don’t necessarily feel like we belong in The Hilton, Denver seems like a gorgeous, bike friendly city and we’re looking forward to checking it out later today.

Wish us luck!