We met up with John from Reno at about 8 a.m. to fuel up and invade Denny's for breakfast. From Jackson we headed east on SR-88 and within the hour got noticed by a Highway Patrolman coming from the other way, who turned around and trailed us for a while but lost interest when we turned onto Bear River for a break. What can you say, we weren't speeding, but John was riding a blue one and attracted attention (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!!). Great riding, but again we piled the layers on to get comfortable. We picked up SR-89 up to our first junction with US-50 - Yippeee!!

We crawled, and I mean crawled around South Lake Tahoe with the tourists. We took one tight steep twisty so slow I had to throttle by John on the right just to stay upright. The squirrels thought it was a cheap move. We enjoyed Emerald Bay and made it up to Carnelian Bay for Lunch at Gar Woods, as had been suggested by Bob in San Diego.

John offered that we could check out Virginia City and also visit Adventure MotoStuff if we were up for a little reroute. So we headed over SR-431 (Mount Rose Highway) to drop down to see both of these. Virginia City was really neat to see, so we enjoyed cruising through slowly, but continued onward to get to the shop before closing time.

We picked up a lot of crosswinds south of Virginia City on the truck route, so it was good that we had plenty of practice up to this point. We stopped by Adventure MotoStuff in Carson City and picked up a pair of Tour Master cold weather gloves for Lisa. Her ski gloves weren't cutting it, and it turned out to be well worth it even though the Sierras were behind us - the coldest day was to lie ahead. Adventure MotoStuff is a nice shop with a V-Strom prominently displayed in the front. Chad and Judi test everything they sell for the Strom, so you can pretty much guarantee a good fit of anything you buy from them. 

John was invaluable in our trip planning and it was even better that he took the time off to ride with us. We met John on the V-Strom Forum, which has also been a great asset in building our knowledge base on this bike, and motorcycle adventure touring in general.

We promised to keep John updated on the rest of our Nevada ride, and he returned home to post some pics of us and keep our San Diego contingent informed of our status (while were away from civilization, i.e. the Internet). We fueled up and found nice accommodations at the Desert Hills Motel off US-395, and found some nice eating places nearby. 198.4 miles for the day. -- Next, US-50 and SR-722