Day 13

The main attraction of the afternoon was the California Route 66 museum at Victorville after which we had another good ride through the mountains. Alistair set a good pace, and through the bends the sound of grinding metal would often be heard. From the back it was noted that big Al was unable to shake loose the ever present 'Staff' who could be seen cranking it down and around. Steve is currently trying to find a file to get rid of evidence from the bottom of his bike and during the ride would wonder why the sound of grinding continued even when he was upright, only to see in his mirror 'Blademan Cliff' grinding away. Into the town limits and it was a slowdown to 30 mph with a fill up and onto Big Bear Lake where we were staying the night.

As we left Needles and started to ride through the Mojave desert the wind was much calmer than the previous couple of days but still had a bit of a chill to it. Luckily, I went prepared and had a few layers on.
Several stops in the morning to see more historic sights of the old route, one of which was a cafe where we had coffee and apple pie, (just the one piece of pie today) at Ludlow. Again like most of the cafes and other road side attractions along this route there was an old car outside, with flat tyres and even flatter paintwork!
We had lunch at Barstow Station, where they had some old railway carriages for restaurant seating. The donuts here were good, in fact very good so after my initial taster one, I got two more, (well I did only have the one piece of apple pie earlier)!