The Mobius Trip

[Rutsref]

Very cool

[JackJack]

"There was one section that was extra-wide, a little soft, but graded, and paved with grass..."

A runway? We often used a small plane to find missing cattle on our place when I was a kid...there was a limit to finding them on horseback in really brushy areas or ravines.

Riffle: A swift spot in a slow moving stream. Hence the water was moving so it wasn't stagnant and likely safe to drink.

What a great adventure! I will go see that guy when I head out west.

Keep Rocking!

[DRRambler]

A little scavaging for wire behind the old service station and field repairing the vapor speedo is a breeze





Mid day route briefing



No hassles yet today



This stretch before Happy Valley was the most difficult sustained riding of the trip for me. It seemed like it would never end and I'm thinking LDF would agree with me.





These green bits were all about faith in solid ground. I knew why they were green...and there was some water in places but was I blindly riding into quicksand?

Originally Posted by DR. Rock

The next couple of hours, were spent essentially bushwhacking, following a line on a GPS,
which every once in awhile would reconstitute on the ground into something that resembled the idea of a road...
but more often than not, remained a road only in theory.

Mr Jenkins was a beauty ...

[DR. Rock]

When I first noted the round barn on the map when I was creating the route, I thought it was some kind of novelty tourist attraction, like the worlds largest ball of twine.



but in fact, it was an impressive accomplishment of pioneer ingenuity and engineering.









Of course, LDF was obsessing over this animal track which she was convinced was from a beast spawned by the crossing of a mountain lion with a bear with a wolf.

[DR. Rock]

or so to The Narrows... and we were feeling much better after our stop with Mr. Jenkins. Here's my recap:



"Stop looking at me like that!" I don't know why, but the cows were creeping me out.



It was some nice trail to get to the Refuge. You can see the wetlands in the distance.



The last bit was paved,



and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say we weren't a little disappointed when we saw what our camping opportunity would be:



an RV parking lot, a grassy knoll, no fire pits, no view... sigh. We gassed up, bought some appetizers and cocktail fixin's at the gift shop,



and set up our tents.



The good news is that there were hot showers. Or showers, anyway... the one Dave had was curtailed, but the stall LDF used never ended, all off of one quarter. I chose that one. We had a nice dinner in the restaurant, and a small campfire in a fire bowl made from an old washing machine inner drum with legs welded onto it.

After the day we'd had, no one was complaining.

[DR. Rock]

(green line was our intended route -- yellow is what we did)





the day's .GPX file can be downloaded here.

[TwilightZone]

>"... mountain lion with a bear with a wolf. "

It's a Bearcat! Very elusive like Bigfoot or the Yeti.
Many have seen Bearcats... but no photos have surfaced yet.

[nachtflug]

isn't that the tree where Llewelyn Moss found 2 million dollars?

[DR. Rock]

Originally Posted by nachtflug

isn't that the tree where Llewelyn Moss found 2 million dollars?

Nah, that one's coming up... stay tuned.

[DR. Rock]

Today our route would continue west, possibly to Christmas Valley, or if we made good time, we'd skip that and just press on to Silver Lake where we'd been before on the TAT. We'd only be crossing one paved road in between, Hwy 395, not that there would be any services.

I'd traced most of the route on GoogleEarth, with the exception of a couple dry lake beds where the tracks sort of dispersed. Otherwise, I had the usual anxiety of getting turned around by gates and such. And I could in no way vouch for the difficulty of the terrain. Turns out, we didn't have a single reroute the whole day.

We awoke to overcast skies, and a few sprinkles.



We started with a short paved transit section that took us out on the Double O Ranch road.





Through the refuge,



where we actually did see some birds,



I don't know why the birders get their undies bunched about motorcycles... we flush 'em out so they can log them in their little books. They should be thanking us.

[DR. Rock]

was a gate that marked the boundary of the Refuge.



beyond which was who knows what. We made our contributions to the wetlands,



performed one last pre-flight check,



and pointed ourselves at the first dry lake bed crossing.

[DR. Rock]

what to expect... but it didn't take long to figure out.





Past the rise, there were a couple more lake beds, but they were more sandy.





Overall this section was visually striking, and I think the overcast weather and clouds contributed a lot to that.



Climbing out of that valley, we were on vague cow trails again (OK Mr. Jenkins, "roads")

[DR. Rock]

Iron mountain (5800ft)



and the road that'll get us across.



On the next ridge there were some old structures,

[DR. Rock]

when the trail looks like this:



To get to the next valley, we had to navigate some canyons,



the riding was technical, but not terribly so.



or maybe we were now acclimated so that mildly challenging, difficult terrain now seemed easy.



Looking back,

[DR. Rock]

for a few hours...



it was time to take a little break.



the canyon we just climbed into and got spit out of:



Riding away from this spot for a good five minutes and turning back yielded this view. We took our break where the road meets the canyon: