The Donner Pass… Or Thereabouts

The initial plan was to camp at Yosemite but there was a hantavirus outbreak (not the kind that lurks in your hard-drive) so this was a rather impromptu detour. If I didn’t mentioned already, I got to meet up with my tent mate from the Mongolia Unicycle Tour who lives in the Bay Area and since she’s a much better person (and driver) than I am, I got chauffeured around over a couple of days. I’ve read about the Donner Party before but didn’t know that that was part of the road to Lake Tahoe. Back when prospecting was still in fashion, a group of pioneers set out into untrodden terrain. By sheer bad luck and a coincidental string of bad decisions, the group ended up stranded and lost in the cold. Their supplies ran low and the weak died and someone probably put two and two together and decided to eat their buddies. A small group of them survived and the route was henceforth known as the Donner Pass. There’s a small museum on the route as well which had some artifacts from the expedition. It’s tragic really. Anyway, speaking of food. We met up with another unicyclist for breakfast in Nevada City (and then a ride) and his favorite place for breakfast (Ike’s Quarter Cafe) serves the best breakfasts ever. Grits and a runny egg and ham and bacon and artichokes AND a biscuit and a gazillion cups of coffee make for a good pre-ride breakfast. The picture shows a half-portion and I really should have gotten the full if it weren’t that I was afraid of puking the good stuff out mid-ride. I brought my spanking new Koxx-One unicycle thinking it was a 45 minute ride on comfortable terrain. It took a couple more hours than expected and we crossed a dam, trekked some mountains and circled a lake. If Santa Cruz was a Beach Boys MTV, Nevada City felt like a  cowboy western. There was a bit of a strange event. We were up and alone on the hills and spotted these two really rusty cans. For some reason, I found this one more fascinating and got a picture of it but not the other. We went slightly further ahead and hung around for a while before heading back and when we returned, the other can was gone while this one stayed in the exact same spot. We couldn’t find it either so go figure.