Saturday July 17th: Started out to be a very nice day for a motorcycle trip. I met Wayne Bright, Lee House, Larry & Dorine Kirkes, Tom & Della Anderson for breakfast at Kline's truck stop. Fred Andrew came out for breakfast too, even though he wasn't going on the trip with us. It took what seemed like forever to get waited on and than served our food. I guess its kind of like that when you're on a schedule.

We departed Fresno @ 0830, which was 30 minutes late. We headed for Sacramento where we were to pick up a couple of friends of mine; who had agreed to go to Portola with us. We picked them up at the entrance of the Arco Arena. From there we rode on up to Marysville, where we had lunch at the local Dairy Queen.

I decided we should take hwy.162 out of Oroville, which turns into National Forrest road 119 and takes you straight into Quincy via the high country. Bob Joyner had previously checked the road conditions out and got a good report. But when we were about half way through the trip we hit a spot that was 4.2 miles of dirt. It was well packed down and actually better road than some of 99 we had been on. When we got to the flag lady I was about 100 yards ahead of the rest of the group, she let me through, but stopped the rest of them. I went on through to the other side and waited on them to come through.

While I was waiting for them, to come through I heard Wayne on the radio calling for me, but we were to far away to make contact with each other. After about 5 minutes I saw Larry & Dorine come through, than Al & Windy (my friends) than Wayne, than Lee with Tom & Della bringing up the rear. Wayne had mud all over him and his bike. It seems as though the water trucks had come through right after me and wetted the road down (GOOD). Anyway poor ole Wayne did some slipping & sliding, did a 360deg turn and down He went. I'm glad to report the only thing that was hurt was his pride.

We arrived in Quincy just a little before 5:00pm. We started looking for the Quincy Lodge, but it seems as though no one had ever heard of it. Finally Wayne pulled out his dope sheet and said it wasn't the Quincy Lodge, it was the Lariat Lodge. (Another senior moment for me). We found the Lodge! Got checked in and started looking for the café we were to eat at. Bob Joyner took it upon himself to seek it out. He came back and reported it was in walking distance from the Lodge.

At 6:15 we started walking towards the café. It felt good to walk a little after sitting in the saddle all day. We arrived at the café and found it to be as Roger had reported (Very Small). We had originally signed up 21 people to eat, but after we all got sat down, we took a head count and found we had 27. I still haven't figured out where the other 6 people came from, but it was nice to have them with us.

We had a chance to meet 5 new members that I have never met before. They were all very nice people. But of course if they belong to the Nor Cal Voyagers, They have to be nice people. Everyone placed their orders and by the time we had finished our salads the food was brought in. Those that ordered the prime rib were really surprised by the portion size they got. The medium size weighed in around 2lbs, the large was close to 3 lbs, everyone that had it, said it was delicious. Wayne & I had a Mexican dish and it was a very nice sized portion also. I guess I could safely say; No one left there hungry.

After dinner we moseyed back to our motel rooms. Some of us stayed at the Lariat Lodge and some stayed at the Gold Pan motel. Those that stayed at the Lariat sat outside, told BS stories and had a few beers. We all turned in by 11:00pm.

Everyone was up by 0630 on Sunday morning and greeted by a light rain, it just rained enough to get everything wet. We dried everything off and headed to the only café in town that was open. We all had a nice breakfast; it was one of those restaurants like you would normally see over on the coast, somewhat of a hippy or a yuppie café. But the food was good and plenty of it. Larry Kirkes ordered a short stack (2 pan cakes), when they brought them out, they were the size of a two layer cake, 10" in dia. x 2" thick. I think he ate just about ¼ of it.

We all checked out of the motel, that is except Wayne, Lee House, Tom & Della & I. We stayed Sunday night and came back home via the Feather River Canyon, HWY, 70. Everyone decided to do their own thing until 10:00am, at which time we needed to be at the train depot to start running the trains. I won't go into this part very much except to say that everyone got to run two trains each and we all got our certificate saying we are all qualified to run these two types of trains.

When we were all through running the trains, those that were going straight home, took of, the rest of us went over to a little restaurant that was smaller than the other two we had eaten at. I think it was called the station house or something like that. We all had something to eat, said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Wayne, Lee, Tom & Della and myself went back to the motel and caught up on our zees, that night we had a very nice pepperoni pizza and the rest of the beer that was left over from the night before. Tom came down with a virus of some kind, first he was freezing, Than he was burning up; Doctor Della took good care of him though and the old boy pulled through just fine.

Monday morning found us sitting at the Quincy café having breakfast; everyone had filled up with gas the evening before so we were all ready to ride. After breakfast we headed north out of Quincy for the Feather River Canyon. Lee had never seen the Feather River or the Canyon, so we went nice and slow 30 &35 mph so the ole boy could see the sights through the canyon, stopping once in a while for a photo shoot. 12:45 found us in Oroville taking on fuel.

We left Oroville heading south. We stopped at a small roadside café just south of Marysville for lunch, than on to Big Sac. When we merged into the traffic on I-5 from 99 Lee got way behind us and we lost him. We waited under an over pass for about 10 minutes but he never showed, so we figured he either took off north to Redding, or he took 99 all the way back to Fresno. I saw him getting off the fwy in Manteca, but we were all the way over in the left hand lane with no time for lane changes. We decided to stop at the Turlock rest stop, hoping he would stop in there, but he went by us like a mile board.

Wayne & I arrived in Fresno at 5:00pm, everyone that went on this excursion said they had a wonderful time and were waiting for the next event to happen.

ROGER ALLEN, YOU DID A MARVELOUS JOB ON THIS EVENT.
WE CAN HARDLY WAIT TO SEE WHAT YOUR NEXT ONE WILL BE. GOD BLESS YOU.

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