Loggin' miles

We had planned to arrive at Hunt's Lodge right around noon on Friday. That meant leaving here by 10 AM. After all, all we had to do was to jump in and go. Melissa suggested making up an omelet for breakfast and so we postponed our departure time by a little but were still able to make the campground by noon (almost exactly). Perfect!

As I was setting up camp, Skip yelled "What are you doing?" I thought what I was doing was fairly obvious so I looked at him quizzically. He said "It's daylight still! Do you even know how to put it up in the daytime?"  Heh! smartass!

Tent erected, beer on ice and available, bikes unloaded, time to roll! Jack Hunt had given me some recommendations on some areas to ride but I forgot to find it on the map the previous night. I asked Lori and she was unfamiliar with it but said that if you took Epperson some 12 miles away it would lead you to dual sport roads .... Cool!

Found Epperson pretty easily and a mile off 68 there was Cannon Ridge Rd, that Jack suggested to start from. Yay! 

We took that and it soon turned into gravel. A couple miles along there was this triple hump entrance to some trail into the woods. I looked at Skip and he at me and we both grinned. 

Off we go .... 

Heh I was carrying some speed over that third hump and I felt the front wheel loft a bit .... Ooops! Luckily, bars were still straight when the wheel touched down and I just kept on going. We are rolling along this little path that was so indistinct in spots that there were times i was curious if we were still on it. 

The trail started climbing uphill. There was this one hill that I came to and lost momentum near the top. I grabbed the front brake and slowly let myself down backwards and gave it another go! 

I'm spinning! Yippee! it had been raining the past few days on and off so it's muddy.

I was able after a couple tries to free myself of it and crest the hill, but my temp gauge was at 3/4 and fan was rolling so I just shut it off. Skip came back thinking I needed help and I told him I was cooling my engine. We sat there for a few minutes once again enjoying the quiet. So peaceful.

After a few minutes, fired it up and we continued on. This trail was nowhere near as tough as what we saw yesterday. There were still challenging parts but I wasn't near as intimidated by what we were going through this time.

Today though was more stumps, branches, logs lying across the middle of the trail. Some of them were pretty good size. I had to teach myself to just pull back on the throttle and go. We were at about this point here ....

 when I got caught on a log (it's behind this point.

I was stuck.

I couldn't move. SHIT! SHIT!SHIT!SHIT!

The swingarm was planted on the log. I couldn't get the bike to power over it as there was no traction. I couldn't put the kickstand down and get off it because the log was in the way of the swing angle. I could barely flatfoot so I couldn't roll myself fore nor aft.

I was screwed. I basically had to sit there and wait until Skip come to help.

I suppose I could have lowered it to the ground and lifted it up off the log, but didn't see the point if I didn't have to. Skip came and gave me a little push and that was all that KLR needed.

Again, I am soaked from wrestling with this thing. So we stayed there a couple minutes, hydrated and rested, snapped a couple pics and back at it.

We continued down this trail a bit but soon had to turn back around. Yeeha! another bout with this log. I am on the gas and it got a bit squirrely and ... you guessed it .... dumped it again. Got it picked up and was able to get past it this time. 

I think that was the only (unplanned) drop of the day. We continue on another trail and then onto another and come to this nice 180* ridge view so we stopped and got some more pics.

This trail wound down the mountainside and eventually we came to a place where there was a tree felled across the trail at a 45* angle. It was waaaayy too big for us to move, we had no chainsaw (as it was about 18" diameter) but there was enough room between where it touched ground that we could probably lay the bikes on their sides and drag them under the tree. There was no safe way around this tree. Below there was a 4' drop off and above it was a 6' steep climb with trees in the way. 

We would've turned around but there was a gravel road on the other side of this tree, so we decided to drag them under and see where the gravel road went instead of backtracking. So this is what we did.

We got his KLX through with little problem (which we expected) but my KLR was a little more work. We managed to get it through, but were pretty spent from it. We sat there a few minutes and in doing so, I noticed my shifter was now bent. Apparently, it got hung on something as we pulled it under.  

I reach in my toolbag and we remove the shifter peg and are using two rocks to kind of beat it out until I can get it to pivot. It was better but I still couldn't shift it when sitting ON the bike. I could when standing next to it but not sitting on it. 

I didn't realize this until we had started down the road a bit. I tried getting Skip's attention but was unsuccessful and I couldn't catch him being stuck in first gear. We came to a turn and that is when I told him. 

We no longer had any rocks to use and were actually to 68 by now, but I didn't want to run this thing in first gear the whole way so I went into a parking lot, grabbed the shifter with my hand and put it in second gear. I can still take off in second but it lugs. However, it's not running at 5-6K RPMs going 30 mph for 6 miles back to camp. I could run 40-50 comfortably now. That's better.

We got back to Hunt's and I removed the shifter and put it in the vice and tried bending it to an angle that would work more effectively. Thanks to Bob Nelson. He was able to spot that the angle was not right to gain the leverage necessary to move it. We tinkered with it a few times and a quick test run around the lodge and it was workable.

Tina and Mike planned on ordering up some pizzas for everyone. Wow! what an ordeal. It seemed to take an hour and a half to put together that order. Thanks to both of ya. After dinner time passed too quickly and I eventually wandered off to my tent as well.