Carlsbad &etc

[Nails]

So, I left a week ago, bound for Carlsbad in SE New Mexico. Temps started in the low-50s, which felt pretty good; but I soon ditched the windbreaker shirt and levies for just a tee-shirt and shorts under my riding mesh. It got into the mid-90s before noon.

I rode through the pinon/juniper mesa-lands of home down to buffalo-wallow grasslands, then into the north end of the Tularosa Basin. This is a bolson (a valley with interior drainage), which also contains White Sands National Monument further south. But I turned off through Capitan (Smoky Bear fame) and Lincoln (Billy the Kid fame) to godforsaken Roswell. I got held up coming out of the mountains by a heinous wreck. When I finally got by, I saw a pickup with the roof cut off. Hard to imagine anyone survived.

I rode through Carlsbad to just south of New Mexico, to camp in the Guadalupe Mountains National Monument in Texas. Plenty warm -- just needed a sheet, sleeping on top of my bag.

[Nails]

I backtracked to Carlsbad Caverns. Here's the mouth, where audiences watch bats fly off in the evening. I'm sure it's spectacular.

The footpath switchbacks pretty steep and continues going some 800 feet underground, almost straight down.

Besides this swell paved pathway, the Park Service installed lights. These accent various formations most artfully, with enough light to see where you're walking. Here's my last view of sunlight for three hours in the aptly-named "twilight zone" near the mouth.

[Nails]

I've been in lots of caves, but this one blew me away. I kinda lost my mind and took more than a hundred photos. (Note that this was available light photography, and the light was mighty dim. I was surprised the camera worked at all.)

One of about four strobe shots.

A remnant of the original "path" -- twisted barbed wire.

[Nails]

The cavern is huge with rooms more than a thousand feet long, ceilings more than 100 ft high, and bottomless pits.

[Nails]

Even rooms behind rooms, behind more rooms.

[Nails]

delete please -- see? I'm trying to cull some photos.

[Nails]

All of these formations have names. This one is called the Whale's Mouth.

[Nails]

(Parental discretion advised.)

Another strobe shot of the same formation as above.

[Nails]

One last grotto and I'll give the cave a break.

[Nails]

I spent two days in godforsaken West Texas visiting my daughter in MOS training. (Hard to believe how much she's changed in just one year. I think Marine boot camp had something to do with it. Terribly proud of her.) Then a horrible ride with triple-digit temps across godforsaken Texas and Louisiana.

The Natchez Trace ... lots of bikers think it's boring. That sounded pretty good after 14 hrs of 80+ mph sweaty freeway buzz. But here's one of the tightest curves in the whole 444 miles.

My first stop was a nice cypress swamp where I saw a big turtle. Some folks say there are alligators too, but I don't believe it.

This is a very old trading trail. One marker described de Soto exploring along "animal trails" in the early 1500s. Note that the Spanish were here well before the Anglos. And those "animals" were native-born people who were here long, long before that ... dammit!

Three centuries after de Soto, Anglos built rafts and floated produce &etc down from the Ohio Valley. They sold everything including the wood in the rafts and then walked back home on the Trace. I read stories about "Kaintucks" and horses wearing the pathway down ...

But I call BS on this too because other parts of the trace (also on soft soils) aren't incised into the landscape. I think this trail just caught some drainage, basically making it a gully.

[Nails]

I camped at the Jeff Busby campground expecting a long, quiet sleep. But unbeknownst to me, this is next to a very active mountaintop coal mine. With the night's stillness, the sounds came through loud and clear: a very busy, semi-rhythmic "industrial" sound of large loaders dumping coal into larger dump trucks. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the soundtrack to Eraserhead, which gave me nightmares. I mean the half-asleep kind of being paralyzed while some unnatural clawed paw is checking out my hand through the tent wall ... and I couldn't even say "shoo!"

I did eventually get some sleep. The next (sleepy) day, I took two 35-mile detours off the Trace: one unwanted (re-paving); and the other on TN-99 from Waynesboro to Hohenwald. This was some 25 miles of sweeping curves with a chance to stretch the XII's legs a bit. I got back to the Trace at the Meriwether Lewis Campground, where I had planned to camp in the first place but spent too much time stumbling around swamps.

So I stopped for the requisite photo of the Arch Bridge and hit the road.

I ended up in Bowling Green for the night. And then last night I crashed the "ride in" in Wilmington, OH. It was good to put some faces with (alias) names.

To be continued, after a respite at my mom's house.

[GrandpaDenny]

Where are you headed after Ohio, Nails?

[Nails]

Where are you headed after Ohio, Nails?

Thanks for asking. I'm actually trying to figure that out right now. Options include:

1. Going back just a little west of the Trace, focusing on finding some Blues along that Mighty River. (Inspiration: usmalenurse)
2. Looping north, maybe by Indianapolis or so, through SW South Dakota. (Inspiration as above)
3. Looping further north, like maybe along Lake Superior, and then to SW SD.

For 2 or 3, I could go from SD to home or go back via LA to visit Deanna. (Along the way, rag on Bonnie and Clyde for not posting about their trip through the same country. )

Factors include:

• Whether it's too cold at night for the ultralight camping gear I brought. I've leaned a little too heavy on motels this trip, but that's mostly because it's been so dang hot.

• Deanna's schedule (pending medical issues -- I might have to become Step-N-Fetch).

• My schedule -- firewood, shop tape/texture/paint, truck maintenance, house ductwork repair, making the goldurn 1010 start (again) so I can plow some snow ... believe me, I could go on.

It was nice to drop in on the folks at the ride-in. They apparently don't have any chores.

[GrandpaDenny]

Have you considered going further east to enjoy the autumn foliage?

[Nails]

Yeah, but I really need to get back. And mom is doing much better here.

A cool front just blew in from the NE. Looks like it'll be around through the middle of next week, so I'll leave for New Mexico on Thur or Fri. By that time, nights should stay above the mid-40s everywhere I'd be going -- well within the scope of this little bag. Sturgis is calling for cooler nighttime temps after 10/4, so I'll beeline there. And Deanna's surgery is later in October, so I'll fly out to LA as a separate trip.

More information than you want ... but my trip basically just planned itself.

Next year I'm due to go back to Maine, this time bringing my own bike with. But that's the far distant future.

When are you coming back to the left side of the Mississippi?

[Bonnie and Clyde]

Good stuff

[Nails]

So I spent a week in Ohio on some family business including visits with cousins and uncles that featured lots of laughs and beer.

We're all out of beer!

One crazy thing: I took a little joy ride near mom's house, saw a light on, and stumbled upon a parking lot FULL of Voyagers. The riders were all weirdos of course, but the friendly and welcoming kind. I have no idea what they were actually up to, but it was fun to finally meet. Had some laughs and beer with them, too.

My mom's neighbor and a handful of his Harley friends had a habit of riding to Sunday morning breakfasts. A couple months ago, one of them (riding alone) was taken out by a woman messing with her phone. Two of that group immediately sold their bikes, and this neighbor hadn't been on his since. But we took a short lap around Hueston Woods State Park, a get-back-on-the-horse ride. He really liked it.

I left Ohio on Thursday before dawn. In contrast to the beginning of this trip, I froze my butt off. Had on all my warm clothes and rain gear too (not raining), pretty much all day. I finally warmed up at a motel in the middle of Iowa after finding a Mexican restaurant/bar/grocery store that served margaritas. I slept well.

I also left this morning right at dawn, almost as cold, but quickly got plenty warm -- mid 80s. These were two kinda brutal 11-hr superslab days in a row, 80+ mph.

As it turns out, Iowa is just as weird as Ohio (where I mostly grew up), and in many identical ways (besides astonishingly similar names -- try saying one after the other fast). I saw several bald eagles, including one standing in soybean stubble amongst a congress of crows. Iowa has a town named Correctionville. (I am NOT making that up -- should've taken a photo of the very nice sign. Even the trees in the park grew in nice, straight lines like god intended.) And freeway banners reminding us that driving is a privilege not a right. Interesting place, but didn't seem very libertarian.

Since I'm almost talking politics (something we're not supposed to do here), of the brazilian election signs I saw in Iowa, not a single one had "Republican" or "Democrat" on it. I think that's a good thing.

And one last weird Iowa thing: I found myself in the middle of a couple thousand acres of corn of course ... buying ethanol-free gas. It was available everywhere.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else about Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, or South Dakota (so far) -- except that the Missouri River at I-90 is huge. I'm now in Wall, planning to ride through the badlands and then spend a few days in the Black Hills. I put a lot of time into making reservations for caves and camping at Rocky Mtn Natl Park on my way back; but maybe all for naught. My bike is screwing up (see other post); and I don't know how it'll turn out.

But when I got here, the motel lobby had a sign about an Octoberfest Festival happening just two blocks away, only today and tomorrow. That just so happens to be my favorite beer style! But it turned out to be an odd bust -- I was basically the only one there. Evidently four guys bought a condemned lot, probably for about a dollar; and their dream is to open a pub to sell beer to all their friends. A dozen or more drove by but didn't stop. None of these guys are into making beer; and I have to wonder how it's gonna work out. But I got a nice can of local Octoberfest to swill with my bratwurst, sauerkraut, and mustard. Then strolled around the corner into a huge, bizarre "drug store" that I last visited about 35 years ago.

Tomorrow's another day.

[Nails]

Friday evening, after I showed up in Wall, I did some preliminary looking into my bike's heinous miss. I found some minor stuff amiss, but yesterday morning the problem was still there. I decided to throw in the towel. I tried to buy a used truck to cart it home, but the nice seller and I had some difficulties including how to get that much cash on a Saturday morning. So I rented a U-Haul, bought some tie-downs and rope, and got it into the truck thanks to the good people at Black Mountain Powersports in Rapid City.

I rode from Wall to Rapid City via Badlands National Park, thinking the slower speeds would be easier than taking the freeway. I was worried about obtaining the truck before they closed shop until Monday. I mean, I couldn't get into being in the park, only stopping for these two photos. This first is bighorn sheep that weren't much bothered by folks walking within 30 feet (note the telemetry collar on the left one). Those black blobs in the background are bison, the huge kind. I didn't ride into that "grasslands" end of the park, where I surely could've gotten better views. Instead I just powered through the park like one of those worst kind of tourists.

The road through the park was very fun curves even at legal speeds, but the sputtering bike disturbed my fun. I saw a lot of landforms more interesting than this but didn't stop to snap them. You'll just have to take my word for it -- this little park is a seriously fun ride.

Anyway, the bike puked and struggled; and I'm pretty sure it has a bad coil (other post). I was willing to put $1000 on that bet. If I had a coil on me, I would've swapped it in (had enough tools for that PITA job).

So I got a 3K or so mile ride this fall, plus a 1200 mile drive in the U-Haul (all night given that I left Rapid City at 4PM). I'm still trying to get the last few days behind me.

No Wind or Jewel Caves, Devil's Tower, hikes to various falls, driving the loops in Custer State Park, or camping at Rocky Mtn NP on the way home -- I had reservations for all that stuff. But I'm already planning to go back up that way since the Going To The Sun Road was closed when I went to Glacier earlier this summer. Add it all to my bucket list. On the plus side, I drove out from under ominous rain clouds, and it was getting pretty cold. The planned camping would've totally sucked. Fall has fell.

Tomorrow I'll unload the bike, return the U-Haul, and limp the bike back home. Then park it until this winter, when it's also due for swapping in a used head I got from Mr. Leo -- the one in it has a damaged sparkplug thread.

The end ... of my sordid tale and this year's riding.

[Bonnie and Clyde]

Looks like a great ride when it was all going well. The mechanical sucks but at least you are safe and sound. We had a rear tire sidewall bubble stop us on our way home in Ely NV. 347 miles short of home. No bike shops in Ely so I called a buddy who was close and he trucked us home.

We hit devils tower and all points heading east on our 1st week. Cool ride for sure. My wife was fascinated with Badlands NP.

[GrandpaDenny]

when it's also due for swapping in a used head I got from Mr. Leo -- the one in it has a damaged sparkplug thread.

um... ya think that could be the problem?