wander with the wind

MacDuncan · March 10, 2023

I had a few days off and asked 3 buds to rally for a ride. One opted out at the last minute, but the other 2 said "let's go"! My work week was crazy and I couldn't find time to prep before Friday night. Even though most of the time we leave for multi day trips on Saturday around 6 am, I asked them if we could leave late Saturday morning, which means the Saturday ride would be a late afternoon short one.

I was so proud of my buds who showed up at my pad without knowing where they were going for a few days, and frankly, neither did I. No plans, gotta love it. In fact, the only decision we made as we left was to head out on 67 or 8 (but that dang hiway 8 construction traffic jam/merge can be discouraging, so we cruised out 67N). I had info from Oracle, so we were headed the right direction, although even some low areas can have rain issues too.

We wandered through Borrego Springs eventually and out to the Salton Sea, while keeping an eye on the sun so we could drop the bikes quickly and ride for a couple hours before dark, while also hoping that the location might also accommodate a place to camp. Fountain of Youth was considered, but a fire pit and late night beers may not have been ok there, and it was getting late!

We almost stopped at inspiration wash just beyond Borrego, but there were quite a few folks, and we didn't really want to ride the routes we had ridden not long ago, so we kept going..... maybe truckhaven???

Holy Toledo, Yikes, as we approached Truckhaven, on that crazy damaged bouncy road, there were millions of people, thousands of jeeps, tens of thousands of rzrs, campers within 5 feet from each other...and so much noise and dust it made us shudder! No way, so keep going.....

I began to think about stopping in Box Canyon (away from all the Gun shooting though), and leading a loop by starting out Bradshaw, cut over to Chirroco, and then maybe Palen Pass or Joshua tree...... but to my amazement, even though I often see hundreds of campers in that canyon, nobody was there... so bizarre, especially on a Saturday... and I didn't want to leave the trucks and all our gear isolated in that canyon.... so keep going.....

Hmmm, as we exited Box canyon, and with the sun getting lower, we saw many very nice looking campers, motorhomes, etc.. dispersed just across hiway 10 at the entrance to Joshua Tree. Free campsites about a football field away from each other.... looks promising, and I had heard about a little loop near there.

We landed a nice spot and quickly geared up and took off on bikes towards the Joshua Tree park, hmmmm, after some paved miles, we began to wonder if our plans would falter as we couldn't find the dirt, so maybe a passive asphalt spin in the beautiful park..... that could be nice.... (sorry knobbies) but right as we were slowing to enter the vehicle line to enter the park officially, the dirt road was just to the left... throttle on...... Pinkham route. It was casual loop and it was nice to be in the dirt after a fairly long pack and travel day....

A good 40 mile spin followed by a nice fire and brews. In the morning, we packed up to head east, but one of the trucks sounded the dreaded "click, click". With some maintenance beyond just jumper cables, we got moving and headed east on 10. Our late start had us thinking about maybe camping at at Walter's Camp and doing some BDR, and finding Hyduk road, but we opted to find a breakfast burrito in Blythe before deciding. We left Blythe headed south for about 100 yards ....and then I pulled a U-turn and headed to KOFA. Late start?, so what! It should not take too long to circumnavigate KOFA!

We pulled into Palm canyon which has those fantastic large empty lots of free camping with fire pits, and with the next camper often 2 football fields away... Nice.

We packed up and each took a 1 gallon Gas bag and 2 MSR 30 oz bottles. We had to ride a pole trail to get to Kings road and the entry point as our camp-spot road dead-ended to the east.

All good, bikes sounded great, not too dusty, communication radios kept us in touch, spot on weather and spectacular views with the alluvial fans greened up from recent rains. WOW!

We rode all day and the roads were fantastic, not too fast, but not too casual. In the first 50 miles, we only passed a couple rzrs, and 2 bicycles (pedaling in the deeper sand - ouch). The sun was getting low and we knew that moving at about 20 miles per hour in the rough stuff would make us head home in the night. My 525 halogen was like using a candle, but the other bikes had decent lights, but we slowed a bit as we were tired and didn't want to bif way out in nowhere. We plugged ahead and got back late (~160 miles). No dinner, no fire, just drop gear, enjoy the big moon for a brew or 2, and hit the pillow.

Day 3, I proposed a 150 mile loop, but was out voted, it had to be around 40, but I knew once we got moving we would likely do 80 miles.

We went north to the MrsT & T entry and cruised around turning randomly, it was great!

Some roads had short stretches where you could grab some throttle, but there were lots of sleeper rocks that stuck up about 4-10 inches that had potential to toss you sideways if not paying attention, or maybe threaten a dreaded pinch flat! ... so alert throttling when you could was great, and called for.