Day 77. Yucca Valley, California. Spent the day in Joshua Tree National Park (where the Mojave Desert meets the Colorado Desert), climbing over boulders and looking at strange, prickly plants. Got a good view of the San Andreas Fault from Keys View - luckily no sign of movement! Also saw a wild coyote.

Day 76. Yucca Valley, California. We started the day by making sure that the bikes were healthy. After some oil and air topping up they were ready to go. We headed first for Lake Arrowhead which involved almost continuous switchbacks from the hotel to its 6000' foot elevation 30 miles away. They were good motorcycling roads. There was a good view from the top and we were fortunate that it was also hosting an Oktoberfest. Parking was a bit of an issue as the main...

Day 75. Phelan, California. It was tempting to stay another day in Morro Bay, but having just fitted new tyres to both bikes we thought we'd better make use of them. So, we headed inland to explore Southern California. The first part of our route followed Route 58 (supposedly one of the top 15 motorbike routes in the US), and passed through vineyards, giant solar panel ranches, and huge areas of 'nodding donkeys' extracting oil. Never knew California was an oi...

Day 74. Morro Bay, California. Morro Bay is a nice place. So much so that we decided to stay an extra night here. Unfortunately that did involve moving hotels but it was fairly painless in the end as the one next door had space! We decided to start the day by heading out in a kayak across the bay. The current and wind were both pretty strong so we got a good workout. The great news though is that we saw a lot of otters and sea lions - including one sea lion that...

Day 73. Morro Bay, California. Woke up this morning to find our motorbikes covered in ash again. Unfortunately the wild fires in Northern California are still going strong, and with strong winds forecast may spread further. The first part of our route today was fun - up and down the steep streets of SF, then down the coast to Santa Cruz. Unfortunately most of the rest of the route south had to be done on the interstate, as several landslides earlier in the yea...