Breakfast was included with the room at Villa Lago Inn. New for this year was a waffle-maker, so we each had a fresh cooked waffle plus the usual cold cereal, oatmeal, bagel, and juice. Villa Lago also has an un-advertised bicycle rate so we saved about 10% for the room. Total was $63 for 3 people (me in one bed and Kim and Cora in the other), including breakfast. What a deal.

More perfect weather today. We had some headwinds going north but good tailwinds going east, and we would mostly be going east today. We stopped off in Ripon to see my sister who had just moved there, but she wasn't at home. Some people had gotten an early start and then stopped for coffee in Ripon, so as we came through they were just finishing.

We continued on, finally making our first food stop at the small market where Hwy 120/108 crosses over. While we were all there, some of the SAG vans from the tour stopped in. We met Ken Kennedy, Nancy Kenny, Mylo Stenstrom, Greg Azezedo, and Duncan Kelley.

On the road again, we started going through all of the nice orchards with the sprinklers going, coming in to Knights Ferry ready for lunch. Instead of lunch, we found the General Store to be closed for the day, so people continued on. Knights Ferry was the first charming town on the tour, and I took Cora on a historic tour, including the ride across the old covered bridge. We stopped off long enough to have a nice refreshing (cold) dip in the Stanislaus River down under the bridge. It was a good stop. I was very happy to have Cora along, as she was very much in touring mode and was happy to stop off with me whenever I wanted.

We still needed to find lunch, though, so after we got a few miles up Hwy 120/108 we stopped at the small store at Yosemite Junction. We had sandwiches while sitting at a table in the shade of a tree. Our next stop was in Jamestown where we just stopped for sodas, and Cora bought a few post cards.

Just one more section to go, up Jamestown Road and through Shaws Flat, crossing over Hwy 49 and then down into Columbia. This was probably Cora's longest 2-day ride so far, but she was doing just fine. And no complaining or whining. We finally arrived in Columbia, and checked out the town a bit before getting over to the Marble Quarry Campground to set up our tents.

In camp we met up with all of the rest of our tour group. In between much socializing we were able to set up camp. First up was Cora's tent, which she had purchased on E-Bay. I couldn't quite figure out how it was supposed to work, but with the combined minds of 3 engineers we were able to get Cora's tent put up, but we still had one part left over and I needed to find some strong wire to make two hooks, but otherwise it was working good.

Go to the next day.