Canyon Runs and Wildlife

With Mrs. RedTigre working this evening I thought I'd take a canyon run. The day was good relaxing in the morning, getting some chores out of the way,picking up some new tools and then went to see a friends new 2009 V-Strom 650 (John hit a deer two weeks ago and did significant damage to his NT700, but you can't keep a good man down and a replacement was found whilst figuring out what to do with the other).

Nahahum to Swakane Canyon was the destination...

The  overlook near the top of the canyon was so cool.  I forgot to look at the altitude but you can see quite a ways on a clear day.  A couple miles further up I ran into three Wild Turkeys along the road.

 There is still a fair quantity of snow up here at the summit of the canyon exchange and as I crested I was surprised by a red VW Jetta that had decided to adventure up here as well.

 The road  were mostly clear with sections of runoff creeks and ice/snow/mud

The way down dropped significantly in altitude enough that I could shut off the engine and coast down the Swakane side quietly, this is where I hit the deer... literally. I must have been coasting 3 miles when I rounded a corner and there on the side of the road stood a deer with it's back to me. It must have heard the tires of the bike on the dirt because it started into a slow trot where I caught up to it doing about about 20 mph.with it's hindquarters running just about even with my handlebars.  We ran this way for about five seconds when I realized this guy really wasn't aware I was his wingman.


Thinking " if this guy cuts me off we are both going down" and since I was only coasting with the engine off and didn't need any throttle, leaned forward off my seat and with my right hand smacked that poor guy right on the ass and eased on the rear brake in case he darted to the left in front of me. I came to a full stop and not 3 feet in front of me so did the deer! I now know why deer are where they are on the food chain... because he turned and looked at me, gave it about two seconds and literally jumped  sideways when he realized where I was and trotted across the road where it stopped again to look at me while I was trying to navigate my phone out to get a picture. The sound of the velcro spooked it more as it worked it's way up the hill while I got what picture I could.

Coasting the rest of the way down, I fired Mystique up about a mile off the highway and was home in 20 minutes... now I can tell my friend John I also hit a deer, but this one didn't hit back.  ;)

Ghost Town Debut

One of the reasons I got my F650GS was for the pure adventure of riding off the beaten path when the beaten path presented itself. I started thinking about all the abandoned places I would see in the distance and wondered why time left them in it's wake. The first town on my list was Alstown, Southeast of Waterville. I decided to ride through Douglas on Hwy 2 and cut South on Rd. K, then to Rd. 3, connected to Rd. 4 and swung around from behind.

There are lots of abandoned equipment littering the edges of fields or in the strangest places, sometime I speculate that it is simply left where it broke down or was dragged after giving up the last spark. This couldn't have been cheap equipment, and looking at the number of chain drives throughout the machinery and all the sprockets and augers that had to turn I was surprised it was powered by a flat-top six-cylinder gasoline engine.






This was a set of 4 cultivators, each having an individual control set, all chained together and dragged with what could only be something big

Finding all this stuff in the middle of an old lava flow made it feel like an equipment graveyard.


Here we are looking South just before we hit Alstown.

As I rounded the corner and before dropping down I could see a big grain elevator and a small creek cutting across the road. it was only about 18" deep but the rocks were softball-sized and pretty squirrelly underneath.

I intersected blacktop for a short stretch as I came round and then the blacktop ended as the remnants of the town developed.  As the railroad passed these towns up there was nothing to do but dry up.

This house looked like it had been occupied up to the last few years but now stands empty.

This one not so recent...

The stables here must have been for sheep or goats and the flagstone foundation is just like the foundation under the oldest part of my house, which was build in 1903.

I always keep my bike on the road when I go scouting around by myself in case I run into trouble, one never knows where an old cistern, well, or other hidden obstacle may render you unable to get out and back to the road and someone will at least know a BWM out of place in this area.

If a town is to survive, water is a must. This stream comes down from Badger Mountain and the snowmelt.

One of the few signs to let you know Alstown even existed.

Badger Mountain View Cemetery

Lots of 1919 end of life dates here...

Supplee was my next destination, and after cutting back to Douglas and winding my way on N. Douglas Rd to Road 2 East, I began my way through what were roads once upon a time and now look long forgotten. Many of these roads are designated by letter or number, and are far from any real road in a travel sense. Washouts, hidden rocks in the grass, trenches eroded from past equipment and even an occasional deer make moving through this area quite deliberate at times.

All that's left of Supplee is a grain elevator and a row of trees where houses and other buildings may have stood. You can see the tree-line in the upper picture.

What a grand adventure weekend, testing out Mystique's capabilities and learning once again how to handle a big thumper off-pavement. I think I'm going to have a grand Summer when Mrs. RedTigre and I aren't out on the LT or she has to work evenings.

Recap: Palisades/Sagebrush Flats -1 RedTigre-1

I wanted some lockable storage for stuff and kept toying with a Pelican Case but was fussing with the install hardware I needed to prefabricate. Come to find that there is a company (CCS Corp./Caribou Luggage Systems - http://cariboucases.com) that takes the Pelican cases and builds a bolt up system with an integrated lock that simply rocks.  I am usually a CBOA kind of guy, but this was just too sweet, thanks Roger!

The Route

Case installed, it was time to beat it up a little with the ride I got smacked down with last weekend. Without any moisture to contend with I rode out and made it past Palisades and the Billingsly Ranch. The countryside is rich from lava flows and the Great Lake Missoula ice dam breakage 10,000+ years ago that flooded and cut out the valleys we see in the Columbia Basin to Wenatchee today.

Touring across Road 24 to Sagebrush Flats Road was an interesting ride.








I ran across several dead ends where the road continued but access to it didn't, no map or GPS will tell you what has been US Government closed...

























Once to Sagebrush Flats, I shot East to Road J, then to Oventon Road and Road 20, then to Baird Springs Road connecting to Highway 28 at Trinidad and back in to Wenatchee.


This must have been a major road once, with the rail posts and (once upon a time) ropes or cables.



Amazing things to see... a tunnel cut through the hillside where a train runs, a Reclamation waterfall, assorted ranches managing to eek out an existence.

There really is a Baird Springs

Tunnel under RailRoad

Tunnel under RailRoad

The wind about beat me to death on the way back... but it's an adventure, eh?

Out And About (finally)

It's Spring Break and where I thought I'd get time off failed to materialize as a server cut-over took three days instead of one, so I decided to go out and try some reasonably challenging dirt within an hours drive. I won't say where because there is a good chance some lost gold is still nearby where I was and I am still looking for it.. have been for 33 years but I know I'm close!

So leaving the dirt road and powering through a variety of sage, dirt, and rock made me think there are limits to this suspension-lowered adventure bike. While the heart is all there, the belly drags a little too often over some dirt risers and sharp drops. I'm not boulder-busting, but it does take some charge and hold on tight to get through some challenging "make your own trail" moments.  All in all, I had forgotten what a heavy street trail felt like, not since my 1982 XT550 Yamaha have I have to wrestle anything this heavy in the dirt, and the Yamaha was 80 lbs lighter. We'll just have to practice more.

Coming back it was cold rain, plus you could see the April showers were dumping snow in the hills at the right elevation.

I love it!











UPDATE* In a momentary laps of reason I decided to adventure-tackle the Palisades-Sagebrush Flats-Baird Springs road Friday afternoon (April 6th) but got turned back about mid-point.  It wasn't the torrential rain, or the mud so much, but the blizzard sleet that made the dirt-clay combination of the road too much for my Metzler Tourance tires and after almost spilling it every 1/4 mile in the end from the 1/4 clay and slick rocks turned back where the storm kept up with me way too long. The high point was that when I hit the blacktop again the rain was coming down so hard that it knocked 90% of the mud off by the time I got to Hwy 28 saving me $2.00 at a carwash. I learned a lot about my GS on this run, mostly that a 400+ pound motorcycle is a beast in mud and there is a poor medium between tires blended for street and trail, you are going to have to accept one of the other.


Palisades/Sagebrush Flats-1  RedTigre-0