We then turned left on Mountain Ranch Rd.  The next 10 miles were excellent pavement & beautiful sweepers ... til we got to Sheep Ranch Rd.  This is one of those infamous little semi-paved goat trails that beckons you into wheelies over its roughness & elevation changes.  The real excitement though comes when you notice that most of the heavy braking areas entering the steep downhill corners include a launching pad also to get your tires in the air again as you brake.  Wheeee!  At the gas stop in Murphys, I notice that Joanne is getting a lot of attention from the guys who followed her over Sheep Ranch.  Hmmm ... something about her corner speeds on the little KLR650 Girlie-bike. (He-he!)

Next was one of my top 5 roads anywhere; Hwy-4 past Alpine Lake, up to the Pacific Grade Summit, down through Hermit Valley, and finally over Ebbetts Pass.  As if that weren't enough, we then headed up over Monitor Pass on Hwy-89.  At the Pass, we stopped for a little smoke break & conversation.   Down the backside, we turned north on 395, stopped for gas in Topaz Lake, & then turned east on Hwy-208 to get to our lunch stop; the Wellington Mercantile Co.   Lunch was a deli sandwich & an excellent piece of pie of your choice.  We then blitzed the high desert route (Nev-338 & Cal-182) to Bridgeport.  John Mulvihill was so proud that the ST4 passed my SuperHawk and made it stick ... well, til we got to the high-speed sweepers anyway.

Re-grouped in Bridgeport, up 395, and then over the wonderful Sonora Pass on Hwy-108 to our destination for the evening; the Dardanelles Resort.

Matt made it in time for dinner & told us about the morning's excitement: He was running about 80, in the left lane, passed a car in the right, & then did the right-left transition to enter the tunnel.  It was about here that he lost both tires into a low-side with him & the GS sliding way up into the tunnel.  Neither hit anything & came to a stop in the tunnel; an F-ing miracle.  The next miracle was that the traffic behind him got stopped and didn't run him over.  He had hit what he said smelled like a diesel spill at the entrance of the tunnel and commented that it was so slippery it was hard to even stand & walk on it.  Just before the CHP arrived, Matt comments to the driver of the car he passed just prior to the tunnel that not mentioning his high rate of speed would be appreciated.  The driver tells Matt that he is an off-duty CHP officer.  YIKES!!!

As luck would have it, the off-duty CHP witness doesn't mention Matt's speed, Marsha arrives with parts & oil, Matt replaces the 2nd grounded valve cover in 2 days, & rides the GS back home.  After moping around the house & checking out the rest of the very minor damage to the GS, Matt heads up to the Sierras to join us.

There was much discussion about the big man-hunt & headless body in Yosemite around the campfire.  Between this & the fact that we couldn't get breakfast before 8AM on Sunday morning, I was having second thoughts about the 420-mile route I had planned to get home; 120 out to Benton & back, Yosemite, and Cherry Oil Rd.  I announced at breakfast that we were going to take alternate route plan B home.  Earl did some serious pouting and gave me the lip.  I told him that we would have to coerce Matt into doing the Benton Hwy-120 section during the October Death Valley ride.   He pouted some more, but I could tell he was going to live.