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Just got back from Troy Meadows late this afternoon. What a difference a year makes. Last year the weather was rainy, overcast and cool with temperate nights and the ground was all damp, but we weren't allowed to have a camp fire. This year the days were warm and sunny, the ground was dry and powdery, the nights were cold and windy and we COULD have a camp fire. Go figure. :lol:

DAY ONE:

There were seven of us; three from the original group, Roostingu, Pastapilot and myself along with new faces for the event; MCtrails, Piratemonkey, Spaugh and Badfish2. Almost all of us came up in our own vehicles; I went up with Jeff. It was a fairly uneventful drive up with the usual exciting desert scenery on the way.

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With your typical desert metropolitan bergs along the highway.

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When we got up onto the Kern Plateau, we all stopped at the Kennedy Meadows general store. Alan wanted a Troy Meadows tee shirt, but they didn't have any. I wanted the popular pattern trout flies which they were out of.

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They did have some food, however.

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We continued on to the campsite. Here, we cross the south fork of the Kern river.

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After arriving at the typically empty overflow campground and setting up our digs almost in the same spot as last year, we went for the usual shakedown cruise on Beach Ridge trail. It's a good trail to get everybody warmed up on and see where their head is at concerning the type of terrain they will be wanting to ride. If you don't like Beach Ridge, chances are you won't like much else that's out here to ride. I really began to miss the wet ground, traction and absence of dust (although I was leading, so the dust wasn't much of a factor for me at this time) that we had last year.

But nature is nature and you can't just order up your favorite conditions, so....so much for that.

Here Piratemonkey takes a slight detour through a ditch near the Beach Ridge trail.

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The rest of the group.

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Piratemonkey and I went back towards camp while the guys toured a few more trails. Badfish2 arrived late and did not make the shakedown ride. Here's a shot of Troy Meadows right near our campsite.

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Two bikes and a swell home-away-from-home. Thanks again to MCTrails for sharing.

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After the guys got back and everybody rustled up some supper, we all gathered around the campfire.

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And it was a good thing that we could have a camp fire, because the nights averaged about ten degrees cooler than the year before, making night time lows bottom out in the low 40's. And it was windy all night on the second and third nights.

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Finally, one by one everybody turned in for the evening. I climbed into my sleeping bag and snuggled down, looking out into a pitch black and still forest. It was so tranquil and hushed. I felt like it would be a restful night maybe. :lol:

But sometime just after midnight a sound awoke me. It was far off in the distance and sounded like a cross between a low roar and a moan of some sort. I lay still; listening. The roar got closer and closer, then stopped after a few minutes. I dozed off into a fitful sleep about a half an hour later only to be awakened by another noise. This time it was very close and sounded like somebody was trying to open a cellophane bag, followed by some nibbling-gnawing sounds. At first, I though that there were some critters that had chewed their way into my fanny pack, which was sitting just outside the window on a table, and had found some snack foods that I had packed in there. But then I propped myself up on one elbow and listened....no, there was something inside the toy hauler and over near the kitchen sink. I didn't want to disturb anybody, so I didn't go investigate. After a while, the snacking noises stopped and I started to go back to sleep. Then the plastic bag that held all my bathroom stuff like soap and toothpaste that was near my pillow made a rustling noise and I sat bolt upright. I had some berry flavored Dr. Franks oral pain killer (for my sore muscles from riding, doncha know) in there and I think a mouse had decided to check that out. I stayed awake a while longer and noticed that the moon had come up and washed the trees in a pale light. The night was now very cold and finally I dozed off again. Then at about 4:15 A.M., that strange roaring noise started up again and I thought that Bigfoot might appear at the screen, right in front of my face....but no, all was quiet again after a few minutes, so I finished my nights sleep.

More to come

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glad you made it back safe. Looking forward to the report. Get ur strength back with some burgers & stuff.... u know where..

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.I see the ranger-ette stopped by to checkl for spark arrestors too :rolleyes:

You mean that Native American guy? :lol:

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He was a nice guy. He had already checked my exhaust and was walking away when I told him to come back and do it again because I needed a photo of Fritz's first-ever exhaust poking. :rolleyes:

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Yeah, he's trying not to laugh.

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DAY TWO

I got up around 7:00 and still managed to be almost the first one up in the morning. This is my view from bed through the bug screen at sun up.

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It was a good thing that there was a bug screen because there seemed to be more mosquitoes around than last year.

After Alan got up, I asked him if he'd heard any noises during the night but he said that he hadn't. We investigated the sink area after I related my tale of suspected nocturnal rodent activity to him and found this; a hungry mousie had gnawed his way into a bag of peanut M&M's and helped himself to a few.

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Besides myself, only Jeff and Zina had heard Bigfoot during the night. Jeff decided to not sleep in a tent anymore and moved into the van. Brad never heard it and cracked a couple of jokes about it, but if he had heard it, he probably would have felt like camping inside something more protective than his tent also. :rolleyes:

It was the kind of a trip where everybody did their own thing. Most of the guys went out to do some trail exploring. Zina and I did some dualsport, trail and singletrack.

Almost at the very top of the mountain....

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at over 9000 feet in elevation.

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We rode around in the Lion Meadows area.

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Checking the map....

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Detour time.

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I believe this stretch of singletrack was called Little Horse trail.

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We managed to end up riding through a controlled burn area, in spite of being careful not to go through barriers and past closure signs. I guess they didn't have enough signs and ribbon for every trail junction that was connected to the burn area. It was all smoldery and smokey, which caused me to be much relieved when we popped out on a main road and left it behind.

After a days adventure, we all settled in for another evening around the fire. Around 9:30 the meteor shower put on a pretty spectacular show just before bedtime. On this night, it was windy and there were no critter sounds, large or small.

More to come.

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DAY THREE:

The guys got up and planned their ride on the butt kicking Rincon trail.

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Whereas, Zina and I had a more unstructured adventure planned. We were going to go and snoop around by the south fork of the Kern to see if there were any fish to be caught. So we loaded up our day packs and hopped on our bikes, then headed down the highway a few miles. We eschewed the regular anglers staging area along the pavement in favor of an area on some fenced property off the beaten path.

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In spite of the fact that there had been no stockings this year, I hoped that we would find some hold overs and wild fish to be had, but as we trekked up and down that stretch of river, it was becoming more and more apparent that there was nothing there over about three inches long. We explored and wetted our lines anyway.

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A couple of guys waded upstream to where we were. They were doing some kind of plotting or charting of the river for some government agency. They asked how the fishing was going and we replied that it wasn't going at all, so they told us that there was a beaver pond or two up next to the Kennedy Meadows campground where we might find some bigger fish. We thanked them and made a hasty retreat to our bikes. I hopped onto the old KLX and putted up to the gate to open it and then waited for Zina....and waited.....and then rode back down to the river where I found her with her gear spread out all over the ground. Her bike key had managed to jump ship somewhere down here; probably in the deep grass and tangled weeds near the water. Anyway, it became evident that the key was not going to be found, so Zina sent me back up the highway to camp to retrieve a spare key that she decided to pack at the last minute. ;) After that we

cruised over to the Kennedy Meadows campground and descended on foot into the canyon to the riverbed. It was lush and wild down there and much more buggy than the first spot that we stopped. So far I had managed to keep the water from going over the tops of my waterproof hiking boots, but here there wasn't much dry ground to navigate on to make progress up the waterway and by the time we found the beaver pond, I was in up to my knees. :lol:

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Here, Zina spotted a nice pod of 8 to 10 inch fish all stacked near the bank on our side. I waded downstream a bit and cast a gold and yellow spinner upstream just past them and reeled it gently though their midst. I saw the flashes and felt the bumps as some of the school turned and hit the lure. The rod even loaded up once.....but no solid strikes. :lol: Then the fish got wise to me and scattered. We fished a while there, though.

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After a bit, I waded upstream and investigated an island in the middle of the river. While I was out on it I heard Zina calling out "Look at the beaver!". So I tried to hurry back down to the other end of the island without falling in the drink. I arrived just in time to see a big head sticking out of the water. Then as the head went under, the broad tail momentarily surfaced. I made my way back to where Zina was standing and we stared at the spot where the beaver disappeared. We waited, we ate snacks, we had our cameras ready, but Mr. Beav wasn't going to make another appearance for us.

At this point it was about 2:30 in the afternoon, so we decided to head back to our bikes and buzz on back to camp. My waterproof shoes were like two rather small aquariums full of water as I walked back up to the KM campground road. :rolleyes:

And speaking of buzzing, here is one of the two rather large Pacific rattlers that I encountered during our trip to the mountains. :o

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Back at camp, the guys had just come back from their ride and not much was going on. It was kind of late for another ride, but Zina was going to go do one. Then Jeff decided to go along and this was our last full day up here so I decided to join in also. We went way up Sherman Pass to Sherman Peak, then descended to where Rincon trail crosses the highway, then back up and over to Trout Creek Trail where we did some singletrack before finishing off our days adventures.

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There was lots of twisty highway on this ride, but too rough and uneven in a lot of places to be of much serious use for sportbike pilots.

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At Sherman Pass we were up about 9200 ft above sea level.

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Trout Creek trail was a lovely little singletrack that wriggled through trees and meadows. I made good time on it and though it was quite pretty, I didn't bother to get any photos there. I was going along at about a third gear clip on the green slug and ended up back at the highway several minutes ahead of my riding partners. I should have taken my time because the mosquitoes were descending on me like...well, bloodthirsty mosquitoes while I waited.

It was getting dark when we finally rolled back into camp. We settled in for dindin and campfire before turning in.

In the morning we prepared to leave and headed home.

From pavement to black diamond singletrack; there was something for everybody. I had brought two bikes up, intending on putting the KDX220 to plenty of use, but ended up putting less than twenty miles on it (and somehow ripping off half the outside knobs on the front tire in the process). Instead, the KLX300 is the bike that got all the mileage put on it, due in part because of the amount of pavement I rode this year. But the bike was surprisingly pleasant to ride on all the singletrack and ran shockingly well at altitude. And there's still plenty of untapped trails to look forward to exploring (for me, at least) on the next Troy Meadows Experience. So ends another epic adventure with a great group of people. :good:

The end....till next year. ;)

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Thanks for the write-up, Mimi. And thanks again for taking my key-loss in stride -- it was quite a sucky moment. At first I wasn't going to bring the spare, thinking to myself, "Eh, I'm not going to lose the key." Then I thought better of it because a disabled bike that far from home would ruin the trip.

Phew.

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Okay....where's all the pictures from the Rincon portion of the ride? :rolleyes: I haven't seen any of those yet or heard a report on it. Jon? Alan? Anybody? :lol:

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Great photos. Jeff...."Bike on a Bridge" was my favorite. Looks like a great trip.

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What can I say?....just very sorry I couldn't make this one...having a great love for the kern area already...I must get up there and ride this time....with nights in the 40's in august, better make it soon..probably a foot of snow by october when I wanted to go...

Mimi, you are a great photographer and I love your narration.....(you really need to write a book)...you let people feel like they are there....

Anyway, thanks for the awesome write up....deb

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Wow, that's a great looking area to ride. I saw a couple non plated bikes in the pics, does a green sticker still give you decent access?

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Just got home a few hours ago. I stayed and rode a couple of extra days after everybody else left. Well, PastaPilot and I rode Friday and I rode solo on Friday late afternoon and all day Saturday.

Great write up and pics, Dirt Dame! And many thanks for organizing the event. I've been wanting to go there for many years and glad you made it happen for me. We really had a great group of folks and I want to say thanks to you all for making a lot of great memories for me.

I'll add some writeup and pics tomorrow when I have more time and am not so tired. For now here is a pic of Spaugh wheelieing up the Rincon Trail.

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Wow that looks great! Thank you for the awesome write up (so far). It sounds like there's more to come! ;):lol:B)

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Wow, that's a great looking area to ride. I saw a couple non plated bikes in the pics, does a green sticker still give you decent access?

Green or red sticker will give you access to literally hundreds of miles of singletrack (or at least it'll seem like literally hundreds of miles) up there. Both years we rode during the week when the place was empty and both years members of the ride rode their unplated dirt bikes on the highway without any problems, mostly because there is almost zero traffic. I'm sure that if you go up there on a weekend, there will be more law enforcement to keep riders in line. Both years, the rangers came around to the campsite on Friday morning to check our bikes for stickers. plates and spark arrestors. The Blackrock ranger station was open all week last year, but probably due to budget cuts, it was closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this year.

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Day 1-

As Dirt Dame previously stated we started our riding with a short shakedown ride from camp to the Blackrock Ranger Station. From there the girls took the road back to camp and the guys (Spaugh, PastaPilot, Roostingu and me) continued on north up the Beach Ridge Trail and then took a right on the Albanita Trail and east to the Jackass Creek Trail. We took the somewhat rocky and whooped out Jackass Creek Trail south and back to camp. This little warm up ride on the afternoon we arrived was 23 miles long and gave us a good look at what to expect.

Here is Jeff somewhere along the Beach Ridge Trail.

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The line up of the guys bikes and Pasta and Roostingu.

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Pasta emerging from the Albanita Trail at a road crossing.

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A handlebar shot looking down a section of the Jackass Creek Trail.

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Day 2-

This day Pasta, Spaugh and me decided to do another loop in the east side of the riding area which is generally intermediate (blue square labeled) trails. The western part of the riding area is covered by mostly advanced level (black diamond) trails and would have to wait until day 3’s ride.

The ride started by heading south on the dirt roads by camp and onto Mahogany Creek trail south to Rattlesnake Creek trail. Here is my bike and Brad sitting on the Mahogany Creek trail where it crosses the road.

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Rattlesnake is a black diamond trail which we took north to the Beach trail intersection. Here I’m looking down the Rattlesnake trail into one of the many creek crossing it makes.

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We elected to not take the Rattlesnake trail all the way to the dead end but took a right at Beach trail which brought us up out of the little canyon we were in. Beach is rated a black diamond trail and is a rocky somewhat steep climb up out of the canyon at that point. Once out of the canyon it crosses the road and still rated black diamond is a very nice smooth easy section parallel to the highway for a mile and a half or so. This is the entrance to that section.

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We followed Beach trail north and then onto Bear Trap Road up to Beach Meadows. At this point we were entering an area where some lightening strike fires were being allowed to burn in a controlled burn by the forest service. Some trails were closed but others were still open even with active fires burning. We continued on north and explored some roads and short sections of trails through the burning area. It was strange riding along trails with stumps still smoldering and saw a truck size fire actually still raging.

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We stopped at Osa Meadows just to the north of the burning area for a quick break and some pictures.

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Continuing on we rode a short section of the Blackrock Mountain trail east going by more burning areas.

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Some areas were completely missed by the fires.

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And then back into more burning areas.

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We popped out onto the paved road only to find the trail ribboned off and closed. Strange because it was open at the other end where we entered it. Anyway, we headed south on the highway and then took part of Albanita trail west to Beach Ridge trail and followed it back south to camp. These two trails we had ridden in the opposite direction the evening before. The ride this day was 38 miles long.

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Good shots of the area. We were kinda near where you were that day, but on different routes. ;)

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Day 3-

OK, Black Diamond Day and the Rincon Trail lay ahead for us to conquer. Jon said he had ridden this trail down, in the opposite direction we were planning to go. We were basically doing this because he wanted to do it and we didn’t know any better. Most of the trails over in the western part of the riding area are rated as black diamond (advanced difficultly) we were up for the challenge.

The ride started out with a quick single track ride back down Mahogany Creek trail as we did the day before. After the first short section we jumped on the highway (Sherman Pass Road) and took a long 30 mile ride on the pavement to the Rincon Trailhead. We stopped to take a short break and get ready for the task ahead. Here Spaugh heads onto the trail.

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After a few miles the trail drops down into a little canyon. It had been going along some pretty steep side slope and then did a few switchbacks down to the canyon bottom. At this point Jeff decided to turn around and headed back to camp. Jon, Brad and I continued on. It was hot and the trail was dusty and challenging. I was thinking Jeff probably made a good choice at this point. Anyhow, we took advantage of the few creek crossing to wet ourselves down and cool off before continuing.

About half way north along the Rincon trail we turned off to the east onto the Cedar Canyon trail. This is a very steep and very narrow side slope trail with a long drop off to the bottom of the canyon as you climb up the side of the mountain. Brad was in the lead with me following and Jon bringing up the rear for a change. I came to a spot which had the only trees along this section where Brad was stopped.

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After only a short time (a minute or two) Brad said where’s Jon? He is never this for behind. Something must have happened! I told him I had stopped just a hundred yards before this and hear him coming around the mountain.

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Brad said we need to go back and find out what was wrong so we started walking back down the trail only to find Jon standing there with no bike in sight. :lol:

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Once we get to him we see his bike down over the side in one of the steepest and loosest sections of the trail. We spent the next 45 minutes or so wrestling his bike back up onto the trail.

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After getting going again we continued the steep climb up Cedar Canyon trail and my bike started over heating and blowing coolant out the over flow tube. We got to a switchback section near the top and decided to stop to cool ourselves and bikes off. Brad’s bike was running fine so I decided to raise the needle one notch and turn the air screw in a half turn. As I worked on the jetting we could hear the coolant boiling in my radiators for quite a while. After it cooled off I poured almost a whole water bottle of water into the radiator. All that seemed to do the trick as the bike ran great afterwards.

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Right after the work on my bike we reached the top of the mountains and started riding in some nice green, cool meadows along the Schaeffer trail. :)

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We followed the Schaeffer trail to the Trout Creek trail which we took south to the Boone trail. The first part of the Boone trail climbed up out of a little canyon with some rock steps where Brad managed to get hung up on one and ended up with his bike upside down as I rode up. I took the liberty of snapping a pic before helping him pick it up. Sorry Brad! ;)

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Onward a short distance brought us back to the Sherman Pass Road and we slabbed it back to camp. Quite the adventure this day we logged 64 miles. Although about 45 miles of it was on pavement the trail part kicked our butts. When we got back to camp I rewarded everybody with a Klondike Bar and we took the group photo. :blink:

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OK, Black Diamond Day and the Rincon Trail lay ahead for us to conquer. Jon said he had ridden this trail down, in the opposite direction we were planning to go. We were basically doing this because he wanted to do it and we didn’t know any better.

;):blink::lol: Now you know better. :)

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Day 4-

It’s Friday and most everyone is heading home except for Jon and me. I finally made it up here after hearing about this place for 30+ years so I’m going to stay and enjoy it for as long as I can. Jon said he was going to stay until tomorrow if everything goes well.

After the rest pack up and head out Jon and I decide to take an easy day of riding and exploring the north east part of the area around Monache Meadow. Since it’s the weekend and we figure the Law Enforcement Rangers will be out I decide to ride the dual sported 525 because we will be riding some roads that require license plates. Jon’s Aprilia that he has been riding all week is plated so he is good.

We head up the highway past the Blackrock Ranger Station to Albanita trail and take it to Granite-Brooks trail to Monache 4WD trail.

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We pass through some of the burning areas again and end up on the north side of it looking back at lots of smoke filling the air.

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We explore a bunch of dead end trails up at the far north end of the riding area and find some great camping areas around the South Fork Kern River.

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At the north end of the road we found a nice camp with some furniture carved out of logs and we sat down for a break.

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After pretty well covering most of the trails we start to head back towards the south and Jon goes blasting through the South Fork Kern River and drowns his bike. ;) He has to pull the spark plugs because the cylinders had water in them and would not let the engine turn over. The front plug was very difficult to get at and so it took a long time to get it out and back in. The paper air filter was water logged so he had to put a rag in the air box and he limped it back to camp trying to stay out of the dust from other riders.

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After arriving at camp he said there was milky oil coming out of the breather tubes from the motor. He decided to pack it up and head home to change the oil and clean the bike up before going back to work on Sunday. This ride was 55 miles long.

After Jon left I took a ride alone out Jackass Creek trail to the dirt road north of Fish Creek Camp and followed the road up to the north to the highway near Albanita trail and then the highway back to camp. This loop ended up being 28 miles and I was tired after a long day.

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