We Have Brains in our Heads, We Have Feet in our Shoes, and it's a Ride Over the Mountains that we Choose

When we left the campground in West Sacramento it was a beautiful Easter Sunday morning. We found a Starbucks and used their wifi to write down our directions for the day. It looked as if the American River Bike Trail would take us most of the way to Placerville at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It turns out that it is difficult to follow a winding river on a poorly marked trail. After having to stop a few times to check the GPS on our phone we found the road and took a busier but more direct route. Thankfully the traffic was really low because of the holiday.

When we got to Folsom we were having some issues with our low gears skipping, and we need those gears to get up the hills so we stopped at a campground to do some light maintenance -- we pumped up our tires and oiled our chain, along with fixing the gears. The next morning we took off early with the hopes of making it to Placerville in good time to meet Josh's uncle and grandpa who graciously came over the Sierra Nevada Mountains with a truck to drive us and the bike past Lake Tahoe to Carson City.





Calm down, calm down. Before you cast any stones and we loose any readers because we cheated a little bit, let us defend ourselves :) The pass through the Sierra Nevada Mountains are over 7000 feet and this early in the season we did not want to be stuck in a snow storm, it would have taken at least 2 days for us to climb up and over. We don't regret our choice considering there is supposed to be some nasty weather on the mountain in these next few days and my legs were getting sore just looking at the climbs we would have had to bike (and walk) up. There are plenty of other
hills between here and the east coast so we don't feel like we are missing out too much.

The ride over the mountains was gorgeous...there was a gravel truck that tipped over on the road so we even had extra time to wait and enjoy the scenery. :)

The time here in Carson City has flown by! We had a great time visiting family and enjoying some wonderful west coast hospitality.

We also ran all over town looking for tires and tubes that are more puncture resistant than our current tires. We settled on thicker tires and tubes filled with "slime", which is a gel that will self seal any punctures. Hopefully we won't get any more flats.

Tomorrow we head out onto route 50, also known as "the loneliest road in America". We will update again when we have a chance.