Friday morning and Maria and I are headed for a relatively short but spectacular ride to Auburn, CA to attend the 49er rally. We decide to take Highway 50 along the south side of Lake Tahoe, then cut north along a well-known local motorcycle road: Icehouse Road. Icehouse takes us to Georgetown, then on to the little junction town of Cool, and on into Auburn. This road is spectacular if you like to get your lean on.

Here the mountains west of Lake Tahoe show themselves as we begin our trek. Riding up Highway 50 from Carson City to the lake and over Spooner Pass is heaven for my big GT. The bike loves sweepers, and this section of Highway 50 is four lanes of them. Always room to pass, and lots of fast sweepers ... a perfect combination for the K-1200GT. Maria and I pass several v-twin cruisers as we are leaned over and two up!

On the other side of Lake Tahoe, we begin our climb over Carson Pass. The scenery is awesome.

Nearing Twin Bridges, we see Horsetail Falls. We're probably a couple weeks passed peak flow, but it still pretty awesome to see that much water flowing down the mountain.

Just before the Icehouse Road turn-off, we stop for lunch at the St. Pauli restaurant. It's a German themed restaurant, which fits with the BMW weekend we've embarked upon. It's hard to stay away from the pork and schnitzel, but I do relatively well ... at least until we got the apfel strudel.

The hummingbirds like the meals here, too.

The river flows along the back of the restaurant.

We travel Icehouse road at a moderate clip, slowed by the RV's, boats, and campers that are heading into the hills for the Memorial Day weekend. Nearing Wentworth Road, we pass Stumpy Meadows Reservoir.

Wentworth road takes us through Georgetown, and then on to Cool.

From Cool, we take Highway 49 north to Auburn, dropping down into a deep ravine filled with peg-scraping goodness. The traffic is relatively light, so we are able to enjoy the road.

We pass by the Foresthill Bridge and take the twisty way into Auburn. The bridge is the highest in California, at 730 feet tall.

We catch up to some colorful riders, one with a pink Mohawk on her helmet.

Arriving at the fairgrounds, we proceed to check-in. While filling out the forms, we hear a "hi there."

It turns out my friend and co-worker, Chris Causey, has arrived at the precise moment we do. I thought he wasn't coming, and we didn't share any plans for meeting, so it's purely serendipitous that we arrive at the same time.

We were planning to meet and ride with another couple, Dave and Cheryl Fletch, who are two up on a K-1200GT, the same bike as mine. With Chris's arrival, we'll have a nice group of three bikes to ride with.