Y’all I am so excited about my first long ride today. I road from the small resort town of Mammoth Lakes to Bishop with a short jaunt to Convict Lake. It was 45 miles of smiles. I left around noon on a bike path right outside of Motel 6. My first stop was Convict Lake. It was a long uphill climb with a nice head wind.
Convict Lake is part of the Sherwin Range of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The lake is know for its turquoise water and glorious rainbow trout, German brown trout, and a species of sucker fish. The lake was named after an ambush attempt on September 17, 1871, when a group of convicts escaped from prison in Carson City. A Deputy Sheriff encountered the convicts near the head of what is now Convict Creek and a shoot out took place. Sitting at the lake you can imagine the whole scene unfold. They need to make a movie about this one day and bring back some of the old western shoot out movies. The two mountains surrounding the lake are named after a few of the posse members who ambushed the convicts.
I came here four years ago got one of my favorite landscape photos I have taken to date. I will post it below. Kelly met me at Convict Lake just devastated because she lost all her photos on Eric’s phone of the two of them. She had thought they went to the cloud and so she cleared out the photos off the phone to make room for new photos. For some reason erasing the photos off the phone also erased photos off the cloud. Heart wrenching. Not a good morning for her dealing with his loss and now the loss of 6 year of memories on his phone. I’m so sad for her.
After my break at Convict lake I headed back to HWY 395 towards Bishop. I road past Lake Crowley and up to Sherwin Summit at 7000 ft. After going up it was so much fun going down. I was a little cautious going down at 6% at first, but once I got going it was so much fun. I rolled into Bishop ready to eat. We found a great burger place called Schat’s Roadhouse. It was so yummy. We highly recommend this place. Big shout out to Bob, Ellen and Debbie Ward for the dinner. It is much appreciated.
We are on our way to Death Valley now. We got flagged down by a couple on a motorcycle by the side of the road. It was pitch black out and we saw there hazards on and flagging us down. They had just broken down and they didn’t have cell service to call a tow truck. Thankfully we still had service, so we let them use our phone and stayed with them for over an hour until the tow truck got there. Kelly and I were happy to help them out. I pulled out my camera while waiting on the tow truck and took a few Milky Way pictures. It was incredible how many stars are out tonight. Wish I knew how to take better astrophotography. I will learn one day.
We are staying at Ranch at Furnace Creek. It is super clean and they have comfy beds. Way over priced though but you are paying for location in this oasis. We got lucky and had a free hotel night on hotel.com so we didn’t have to endure the overpriced stay. The staff is great and will let me check out late tomorrow so that I can come back after ride and shower before we head to Vegas. Yay.
Tomorrow I hope to get up super early to beat the heat and ride to Badwater from Furnace Creek. Night all! Be blessed
