a blog about motorbikes, bicycles, and the folks who ride them.
Clearly, Darth and Obi-Ben have pulled their weight by uploading some of their photos to our Flickr Photostream. And clearly, I should have gone all the way to the coast, based on what I missed out on. After viewing all 500 or so photos, I missed a lot of action on the trip after Crater Lake. And some fine dining. Posh lodges. Bad haircuts. Getting bikes stuck in the sand.
Great Basin National Park, Day 2, Trans-America Trail. Photo by Ben Rafferty.
During my 9 days riding with the group on Darth’s version of the Trans-America Trail from Utah to Oregon, I saw places off the beaten path and met some great people. It would be impossible to remember them all without the reminder of the photos we took along the way. Here’s one we took that has become known as “The Band Photo”, for when we release our first album. This was taken between Utah and Nevada (not exactly sure where we were) at a crossroads marked by Mater, the broken down old truck.
Photo by Nathan Rafferty
Keeping the posts updated on the road proved to be a challenge. Until I have a chance to go back and place images in the context of the posts, you can see a sampler of photos I took with an iPhone on Flickr:
When Darth and Obi-Ben return to civilization, we’ll upload some of their shots and video.
Around 6 PM on Friday, I rolled into Hines, Oregon and found a room at a new Best Western. I met a couple from British Columbia on a big Honda touring bike. They had been all over Utah, Nevada, and Oregon, and were heading back to Canada after 10 or so days on the road. We ate at the same cafe that night, the Apple Peddler, and traded stories. Al Brooks is a motorcycle cop in the Delta, B.C. area of Canada, and a motorcycle instructor as well, so he knew his stuff. Al and I talked for awhile about bikes, the roads and dirt roads in the northwest, and about how motorcyclists are never alone out there. Safe travels, Al and Glenda!
Dessert and coffee at The Apple Peddler.
This morning at Crater Lake Lodge, we awoke to The Shining. Our bikes were covered with some of that 500 plus annual snowfall they get up there. It was decided that no amount of haste in checking out would make the descent off the mountain road any drier, so we opted for hot coffee in the Great Hall and a full breakfast. Let me tell you, you can’t go wrong with Crater Lake Eggs Bennie. Suiting up was grim and our bags were lighter because if it was wearable, had holes and a zipper, we put it on. At the bottom of the access road was where our routes diverged. Darth and Obi-Ben were heading coastal, and Moto was in for a solo ride East. After a few high fives, like three spacemen after planting flags on the moon, I pointed it east to Bend, and the Brothers Rafferty sought out the next leg of the Trans-America Trail.
All three bikes started up, no problem. The riders had a tough time.
After slabbing it from Adel to Crater Lake to try to make up some time, we decided we should detour and spend a night at Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet deep, and the seventh deepest lake in the world. The body of water is a caldera (volcanic basin), has no inlets or outlets, and is filled by 500 plus inches of snow a year. We paid our entrance fees to the National Park Service, then climbed the switchback road to Crater Lake Lodge, which is perched on the rim at about 7800 feet. We parked our bikes in the circle, next to a 10 foot snow bank. Woolfree, the nice bellman from the Dominican Republic (the “DR”) told us this was only the lodge’s second night of the season. We would find they were still working out all the kinks. The front desk could not pull up Darth’s reservation, even though he had a confirmation number from a call earlier in the day. They were able to get us a split level loft room, with plenty of space to stretch out. Then while getting our gear to the room, the power in the whole building went out. Good time to take a nap before our 8:00 PM dinner reservation. The lodge is operated by a company called XanTerra, which has a big fat contract to run this and other grand old national parks lodges. The building itself is grandiose, with a spacious great room with a stone fireplace (with a lame gas burner instead of logs), but comfortable chairs and couches you can just melt into, especially after sitting upright on an enduro bike all day. Due to the power outage, they offered an improvised menu which turned out to be ok, all things considered. The power went back on while we were finishing up coffee and dessert, just in time to turn in for the night. We stayed up for awhile looking at all the photos and video trapped on our respective digital devices, reviewing the good times, small victories, and reminders of the little challenges we have had along the road and trail. Good way to end the night.
Crater Lake, from the deck of the Crater Lake Lodge just before dinner.
After leaving Denio Junction, we hit the dirt in the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge. We passed numerous Opal mines, not many people out on route 8a. We settled in at the Gooch Springs campground and set up our tents in a bit of a squall. By dark, we had a raging sage brush fueled campfire, some beer, and some red beans and rice. We listened to packs of coyotes calling across the valley to each other. When we awoke, there was snow on the ground and ominous dark skies above. We packed up in haste and started a frigid death march across the Nevada/Oregon border. Coming into the town of Adel, the crosswinds blew me from the righthand side of the road all the way to the left. Fortunately, the Adel Country Store was open, with a fire raging in the wood stove, and a friendly sleepy eyed dog named Bush curled up in front of it. My hands were so cold, I couldn’t get my gloves off for a good ten minutes. We just sat there not saying anything for awhile. The proprietor, a woman named Marcie, gave us hot coffee and made us bacon and eggs. I don’t know what we would have done had it been Tuesday. The store is closed on Tuesdays. Sent from my iPhone.
Not sure what we would have done without this place.
Obi-Ben, messing with his phone.
We rolled into Paradise Valley and the little hamlet of Paradise for a quick rest. Little did we know that Paradise would be a shangri-la to wait out a major wind storm. We threw down some lunch at the Paradise Saloon (best cheeseburgers in all of Nevada so far). Our plan was to saddle up and ride over Hinkey Pass. At the 7820 feet elevation summit, Obi-Ben and Moto caught a glimpse of a lion on a distant ridgetop. Unmistakable, lurking low to the ground near a big boulder. When Obi-Ben got his scope out, it had vanished. What was in front of us was an impassable stretch of snow. We scouted it out, but the downslope of the pass was all north facing. What really turned us around was a fast moving
squall that chased us back down into Paradise. We returned to the saloon and met many townsfolk trickling in for spaghetti night. We met Steve Lucas, a friendly and generous man with a big cowboy hat who bought our dinner. Besides running the local feedlot, Steve runs a B&B 10 miles out of town called the Stonehouse. He also owns a little house in town called the Adobe House, which is where we stayed. The Adobe was a fully furnished house with beds, a loft, a coffee maker, and satellite TV so we could see the final performances on American Idol. There was also a .38 Special CD in the stereo, so we rocked that out the next morning. Stay tuned for more about our stay at the Adobe, our thoughts on Cook versus Archuleta, and the prospects of getting into the ranching business.
Sent from my iPhone
All is well after two days and lots of dirt. The small issue I was having with the KTM not starting ended up being a non-issue. When we rolled out of SLC on Saturday, we stopped at The Edge Motorsports in Draper, Utah. Cody the technician took one look at my clutch lever and offered an explanation: I had replaced a bent clutch lever with an aftermarket lever and the aftermarket lever wasn’t engaging a small switch in the clutch assembly. In a nutshell: it starts every time as long as it’s in neutral. No worries.
After the first day, we landed in Baker, Nevada, at the Silver Jack Inn (which will warrant a longer post later). Hooked up with an old friend from Park City, Mike, on a tour on his Moto Guzzi.
Second day was scheduled to be an all dirt route from Baker to Eureka. Before getting rolling, we all rode to the top and back of the paved road into Great Basin National Park, a twisty climp up to the summit of 10,000 feet. After gassing up back in Baker, Hans Solo split off from the group and took his own path back to SLC. Darth, Obi-Ben and Moto did about 240 miles in the dirt, saw some ghost towns, an amazing sunset, then rolled in to the Best Western at 9:00 PM local time. No cell phone service the whole trip, so no road posts. Today’s route takes us to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we expect to have cell.
All is good.
“It was also 90 degrees again, steamy and draining, and by afternoon I had a strong craving for a milkshake.”
-Neil Peart, excerpt from Roadshow
There is something inexplicable about riding motorcycles all day that makes you want to do nothing more than stop at the local dairy bar in a small town for a good milkshake. Almost always, when you bring it up to your riding partners, they say they were thinking exactly the same thing at the same time. More on this later.
Lord Darth and Moto set out for an all day ride, part of our prepping for the May Trans-America Trail trip. We started with a greasy breakfast and a mapping session at the Silver Summit Cafe on a sunny but chilly Saturday. Our original plan was to ride from sunrise to sunset and explore as many dirt roads in the west desert of Utah as possible, but because we were still on the tail end of a long and amazing ski season, it was still a little crisp in the morning for the riding to be enjoyable, so we took our time getting started. We rode from Park City, through the Heber Valley, on our way to Lehi and then Cedar Fort for the last gas up before we hit the dirt. After passing through a few towns with names like Faust, we ended up on the Pony Express Trail. It was hard keeping up with Darth on the loose gravel at first, but after we stopped at the Simpson’s Spring Pony Express monument, I started to get in a groove and let the bike go a little bit. I am still riding the stock Sahara 3 tires that came on my KTM, and I am looking forward to more rides like this with some knobbies on the wheels, hoping this will help me close the gap on the wide open dirt sections.
After stopping at a crossroads in the dirt to stretch and check the map and GPS, Darth took a picture of an Alta sticker on one of the road signs, thinking it would be cool to send this to Connie from Alta. We were only 39 miles from Delta, and decided to continue on to the Little Sahara sand dunes and eventually hit pavement somewhere near the little town of Eureka, an old town in the Tintic Mountains. It was right about this time, we started to think about milkshakes.
One thing the GPS unit does not tell you is what lies ahead when it suggests routes by “the shortest ride time.” In this case, we tried to make it over a mountain road that was snowed in. This time of year, you always have to consider that anything over 6,000 feet might have some snow left over. The telltale signs were more and more deep ruts in the road from trucks and ATVs that had come before. After getting turned around, we backtracked and made our way to Eureka, but without the requisite time to stop for that elusive milkshake, since neither one of us wanted to ride back up Provo Canyon in the dark. There will be plenty of chances for milkshakes on the Trans-America Trail, I suppose.
