
We’ve turned the corner and the days are getting longer! It’s still winter everywhere north of here, but we’re getting antsy to hit the road






We’ve turned the corner and the days are getting longer! It’s still winter everywhere north of here, but we’re getting antsy to hit the road
Just to break up the week a friend and I went out to the 24 hours of Old Pueblo Race area and rode all the trails
It took me three days, but I rode all the rides! I was told the winners finish this 24 hour race with over 225 miles behind them. I did it with only 36. I win! (low score wins – right?)
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I’ve been living with an intermittent coolant leak for a couple years now. Just waiting for the right time to BLOW all the coolant out on a big hill, YIKES!
So, now that I have some free time and some helpers I decided to tackle those pesky leaks and skip over the part where I’m stranded on the side of the road waiting all day for a tow truck. My friends and I managed to replace the radiator, water pump, fan clutch, and fan belt in about half-a-day. I decided to replace all the mission-critical stuff behind the radiator because it’s just so easy when the radiator is out and so hard when it’s not
And the propane hoses stared leaking just a week before the regulator died.
The propane regulator is the second one of that brand to die and all the hoses (4 of them) ended their lives with a leak. Thanks China
I bought what I hope is a better regulator and hoses from PPL motorhomes. Time will tell. I set it up the same way as I did them before without the double bend in the hose.
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Old man winter has booted me out of Nevada. Just too much arctic cold!!!
So now we’re heading south to 70*F country. We stopped at Valley of fire to see the slot canyon and we saw it. Done.
Valley of fire is like a miniature Arches Nat’l Park just a few miles north of Lost Wages NV. Also very close to California judging by all the CA license plates. The campgrounds were mostly full when we arrived at noon. There were a few spots left until about 2. Popular place
Valley of Fire to Somewhere in the desert south of Kingman, AZ
Down the paved trail to an overnight camp spot an hour south of Kingman. We camped among the saguaro cacti and it was only about freezing come the dawn
Cacti camp to Oracle AZ
More pave eastbound across Phoenix. Seventy miles of city-driving. Yuck
Now we can sit at friends place and get some projects done! YaY!
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Got Rain?
The Escalante River in Escalante is not even deep enough to get my socks wet! To be fair we’re only 15 miles from its beginning and it’s November. Even so, the west needs rain!
A few weeks ago friends and I were looking at a map of the western US and wondering where it still rains. Turns out not many places are without a drought
I also looked up the average annual rainfall in the US and it looks a bit like the drought map. If I want wet socks I’m going to have to move out of the desert
Cathedral Gorge State Park, Nevada
What a delightful surprise this place is. Plenty of slot canyons, cute little campground, and sand. Again with the sand. It was discovered by settlers in the late 1800’s along with the mining boom and became one of Nevada’s first state parks in the mid 1930’s. The campground has electric hook-ups and Verizon wireless service. Nice
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I-70 west from Fruita is the same as it always is. We turned onto Utah Hwy 24 West of Green River like all the peeps going to Powell but at Hanksville we struck out west to Swing Arm City OHV area where we ate dinner and watched the sun set.
Next morning we took on the wyndy blacktop through Capitol Reef N.P. and on to the Dixie National Forest. From UT 24 we jumped onto UT 12 and it got twisty and wyndy! This road would be SO much fun on a motorcycle! After 3.5 hours of slow climbs and descents we rolled into the Utah State Park in Escalante.
The park is small, the spaces are small, and the visitor center is just a wood-framed skeleton. Looks like it will be done for the 2021 summer season.
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We went over to Moab to ride the rides and man is that place full to the brim! In addition to being jeep-something week it was also dim-wit in 2wd van getting stuck in the sand week and wait in line forever at City Mark-up week
On the plus side I did see some squeeee and I got to ride all the rides
I rode the Gemini Bridges trail then walked out to the bridges. First time I was here I rode my bike over the bridge
The slick rock trail was still as hard as I remember it being. Mikel and Polly were also in town for the week so we went out to the KlonZo area and rode all the flowing trails out there
I met up with Tom and the Lost Box for some fun rides
Troy and I managed to get in a ride from Fruita to Moab via Gateway
End of the season! An early storm blanketed Fruita with some much needed wetness
This little gem has been on my bucket list for about 20 years. I wanted to ride it on my XR650L but the fuel tank was too small. Now that I ride the All-new for 2017 Huskie Adventure-450 I had a chance at it
I met Stevan about 55-miles into my ride. He had come from the west and already done the hard 2/3-rds of the trail when his WR250 died. I towed him a couple miles to the Gooseberry campground where he was able to make cell phone calls. After I rode west Stevan said, “thanks for the tow Mike……..a good Samaritan couple found me at Gooseberry and hauled me out of canyonlands in the back of their van……8 hour ride sitting on a cooler holding up the WR”
While I was eating a snack at this cross-roads a guy walked down from Island in the Sky. He said it was very steep!
Back in the mining days there was an airport here. No plane on Sundays
The western section of White Rim Trail is a lot more challenging than the east parts. I really liked the section from Potato Bottom to Mineral Bottom/ Creek. Only one steep hill with shin deep poof-sand so I’m good
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I’ve been hearing fun things about the Western Rim Trail in Utah so I went and rode it
After I finished it I discovered I rode it in the hard direction. It’s easy if you start on the south west end and ride it toward Rabbit Valley. All the steep loose hills are descents instead of climbs. This would be more fun on a bike, and a lot more fun on an ebike. Now you know
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The temperature climbed back up in the 100’s so I took a drive to the high country. I took the frost-heave highway (US 50) to Delta then 92 toward Hotchkis, Crawford, Paonia, Somerset, Redstone, and back thru Glenwood and I-70 west
Crawford was still asleep when I got there. It looks like a nice little town right at the edge of where the desert turns to green forest. Further south it looked like a delightful forest road with hay fields dotting the landscape. I went north via the Crawford Rd to Paonia. The road to Paonia drops out of the green and into the brown/ grey desert. It looks like it has never rained out there. Ever
Paonia was also a bit sleepy-faced. The grocery store is a decent size, but there is no sign out front saying “Grocery Store”. They also don’t do face coverings in Paonia (Written Sept 2020 – pandemic days). Real estate is spendy and there seemed to be a few rich-folk about
I took hwy 133 over McClure Pass and traveled thru Somerset along the way. Coal mining town gone bust from the look of it. The further I went toward Carbondale the more I saw expensive new SUV’s flying down the pavement. Ah, the smell of money in the fall, mmmmm
At the bottom of the pass sits Redstone. It was a company town for the coke ovens (the meth labs were in Marble on the Crystal River, hence crystal-meth). Seems coke was a thing besides a drink and a drug
“These ovens comprise part of the Redstone Coke Ovens Historic District, where men at the turn of the century [19th to 20th] “coked” some of the country’s finest metallurgical coal, turning the coal into coke, or pure carbon. Brought by narrow gage railroad from the mines above Redstone at Coalbasin, the coal was loaded into the top of the 249 beehive shaped ovens. Redstone cokers cooked the coal for two days then shipped it to Colorado Fuel and Iron in Pueblo, CO, the biggest steel mill west of the Mississippi. There the Redstone coke, limestone, and iron ore were dumped into blast furnaces to create steel, which made the locomotives, steel rails, and barbed wire that settled the American West.”
These coke ovens were used between 1900 and 1909, then again from 1959 to 1961
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