Well we're now in the last state of the trip, Oregon, maybe by Saturday afternoon we'll arrive in Port Orford, but between then & now we have 600 + more miles to ride!!
There was some fab riding today, never anything too difficult, always flowing & with a right range of scenery to boot. We've crossed desert bowls & plateau's, dropped into huge salt pan valleys, crossed over pine clad mountain passes & finally dropped into the town of Lakeview.
We had a cockup on the distances planned for the day though, I counted it as 100 miles last night plus an unknown amount in California as we had no maps of this bit of the route, it turned out to be 165 miles plus a 25 mile detour around the edge of a 15000 acre bush fire zone, so a tad longer than anticipated!! another muppet moment by Stout!!
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| early morning sun & shadows at 6am! |
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| 1st steep uphill of the morning... |
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| Salt or Sulphur, not sure, but it's pretty colour... |
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| No Virgins here though!! |
In the small town of Fort Bidwell, Sam's maps say there was both fuel & food & so we planned to top up there, however the place closed over 15 years ago!! So a very necessary update is need to both Sam's roll maps & his paper maps as this nearly had us scuppered!! As it was a very friendly guy helped us out by phoning around the village until he found someone that had a 5 gallon drum of petrol, we drove to their house, which turned out to have two very leggy California girls there, who were very helpful indeed. Geoff told Brian, Kevin & me to go sort out the fuel filling while he kept the ladies entertained with his very dodgy Yorkshire banter... Once the bikes had some fuel in each we then thanked the girls, paid them some dollars & headed up the valley to cross the pass into Oregon.
The whole landscape had changed since crossing a pass some 15 miles previously, there were trees again, snow patches on the higher mountains to the south & the whole valley smelled of wild flowers & greenery, it was a welcome change it must be said. The huge dried up lake shone white in the bottom of the valley & dominated the view, apparently they used to fish Kryll from here for catfood...
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| Catnip Reservoir |
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| Dropping down from Sheldon Antelope Refuge |
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| The closed fuel stop in Fort Bidwell... |
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| Northern California |
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| Dried up lake in California |
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| Almost in Oregon |
On the descent back into Lakeview, Brian's KTM was low on fuel & we encountered the bikes second issue, the 5 gallon fuel tank only draws fuel from one side, so to get fuel from the unused side to the used side we had to lie the bike on the ground! That's the first time I've ever had to do that, (The first problem had been the sidestand, Brian & a couple of miners from Denio Junction had tried to get a damaged bolt out last night outside the motel room but it had snapped off & now needed drilling out, so the stand was removed altogether & put away for a future better equipped repair, meanwhile the bike has to be leaned against all kinds of things to keep it upright & so Brian can have a rest!!)
Other than that, Geoff fell off whilst stationary, no damage done, Kevin fell in love with both a bush & a rock at the same time & had to extricate himself from their clutches alone as Brian couldn't get off his bike to help, he said the sidestand was the issue but really he was just laughing too much!! Well done Kevin for showing such fortitude!! I also managed to get myself sideways on in a ditch which needed a shove form Geoff to get me back moving...
We also had a good chat with two of the fire fighter lads, who gave us the heads up about entering the fire zone, it was still smouldering in places but was actually out as far as they were concerned, now was just a clean up operation... Our detour offered a couple of choices, 25 miles on gravel road in a V shape or about 20 on a service dirt road that ran under some pylons, we took the gravel road for ease & speed to be honest.
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| Look closely you can see the smoke trails from the fires |
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| All those hills in the background were burnt!! |
So another day wound up on the TAT, we have about 120 miles tomorrow to get to Silver Lake, hopefully we'll actually get to see that lake as Lakeview doesn't appear to have one that we've found as yet!!
So hope you are all having fun, keep out of trouble...
