When I was a little boy of about six our family was moving to California from Oregon my father told me that CA. was known as the golden state because of the color of the grass on the rolling hills and not because of the gold in them. That was long before the INTERNET, so it must be TRUE!

Patience and I stopped here at the Mariposa hardware store to buy a plug kit to fill a hole cause by a 2" x 5/16" bolt in our rear tire. Must have been one of our early trips, we were on my 05 white Wing.

Riding north from Mariposa on Hwy 49

General Fremonts story

 A few dams along the Merced River make for some scenic lakes.

Hwy 49 between Mariposa and Sonora was a great ride and perfect pavement.

I don't know when this power plant was built, but I suspect it is at least 75 years old.

They feed the turbines or maybe Pelton wheels from those large pipes coming over the hill.

It is sure nice to finally be above the hot desert floor

What a day for a RIDE!

The Donnelly Overlook on Sonora Pass

I walked the path a little................very little!

Tell me if you know what kind of tree this is, I'm guessing some kind of cedar.

Some nice Ponderosa

The Stanislau River rushing between the rocks

Recent fires have charred the landscape

It's amazing how hard the fire crews work to protect the very scenic areas. Even though they didn't succeed here their efforts are obvious! 

I'm leaving a lot of these photos uncaptioned as I'm am just trying to show my friend Ken what the pass looks like.

When I left Merced at seven this morning it was 84 degrees. Up here it has dropped to 71.

These alpine meadows at the top are where the snow melt first starts to form the mighty rivers. This meadow is at the summit of the pass, but still 4000' below the mountain summit.

At only a couple of thousand feet below the pass summit the river is already getting big.

Probably even has some fishies in it.

I'd even bet some hombre will park his bike next to it some day!

Where are the kayackers?

I was expecting too much as I started to enter Monitor Pass from the south end of Topaz Lake.

As I neared the top I pulled over to take a picture and this guy passed by.............whew!

No matter how ugly the flower they are still beautiful when they just kept you from receiving a performance award!!!

You can still see the very south end of Topaz Lake

I wanted a beef burrito, but settled for tuna and a conversation with the owner and riders of this 71 BSA and 72 Bonniville.

This guy rode up on his Triumph fresh back from AK. He was born in Germany and was headed back to Mexico where he lives.

I think this was called Caples Lake, but it sure was blue so I took a pic.

So far I've been four different California passes today. I was starting to get tired and pretty warm so I set the GPS for my sisters and it took me over the Morman Emigrant Trail which was a ball in it's own right!