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Florence Coke Ovens

Joined
Apr 22, 2011
Messages
3,337
Reaction score
395
Location
Princeton, Texas
First Name
Gary
Last Name
Waugh
Well I thought I would keep this separate to the LA2B2LV ride, so here are a few pics of our (Rman, Meriden & Thrasherg) ride to the coke ovens.

Meriden had been as sick as a dog all night and elected to stay and guard the cars, whilst Rman and myself rode the 16 easy miles to the coke ovens!!

It turns out we had seriously miscalculated the time, I planned on 30 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to look around and take pictures and 30 minutes to get back.. So we left at 10:00am and would be back by 11:30am!! That's the plan!! :rofl:

Rman's kickstart had broken on the LA2B2LV ride so we had to bump start him every time the engine stalled (Which was not very often), the path took us almost 1.5 hours to ride (16 miles in 90 minutes!! we could have walked faster!! :giveup:) and was made up of sand and rocky sections with lots of loose boulders/rocks.. We did make it to the ovens and get a few pictures, there where a load of people there in 4 wheel golf buggy things who where really nice and helpful, we would be bumping into them a lot on the return trip!!

Rman on the way to the ovens:-
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Rman at the ovens:-
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The ovens and bikes:-
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Thrasher at the ovens:-
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We then decided to leave for the cars, but to take a longer (32 mile) trip that was easier. It was very scenic and a lot of fun, we crossed the railroad a few times, crossed some shallow rivers/streams and had a great time, until we ran into a small river of treacle.. They tell me it was mud, but both Rman and I felt that there is no mud that is as sticky as this stuff was, we lost our bikes, our boots and where generally exhausted trying to get out of the stuff. I started to cross the river, then the surface of the mud broke and my bike started to sink so I turned for the shore, but got stuck long before reaching the shore, Rman was behind me and saw what was happening and managed to stop before getting too far into the mud. We got Rman's bike out in about 10 minutes, but we spent 45 minutes to an hour having to try and pull mine out. We had to get trees and bits of wood to place on the mud so we could stand on them to pull the bike out without ourselves sinking.. We where completely exhausted by the time we finished. Here is a few pics of my bike with the treacle on it:-

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We finally found a place to cross the treacle stream and get back to the cars. It took us 4.5 hours to make the ride and Meriden was starting to get worried that we had been gone so long.. He was looking a lot better, but we decided to NOT take him to the ovens, so he is living the experience through our pictures!!

Rman, thanks for helping pull my bike out and not abandoning me to the coyotes and other animals!! :trust:

Gary
 
Glad you both made the ride and sorry I missed it. I was so sick I lay in the trailer in the sun wishing I had the strength to get up and spread out an umbrealla. Like I said, though, if one guy summits, the whole team summits so the ride was a success. Maybe we can hit the coke ovens after the next LAB2LV, only this time with better local knowledge. Never trust the tracks you get off the internet! :doh:

I have to admit that when you guys were three hours late I was worried and started flagging down local four wheelers. I couldn't remember if we were in the county with the nutcase sheriff or not.:eek2: Didn't want to bear wearing a pink jump suit for parking in the wrong spot and having out of state plates! When you came back covered with mud though "how the heck???"

Good shots Thrasherg. Good ride too. Got to tend to Cyn now. She picked up the bug as soon as I arrived home.

m
 
:tab Did you guys come in from the South or the North? We came in from the North. That was some of the hardest riding I have ever done. It did not help that I was on a heavily laden and top heavy KLR 650 with stock gearing :doh: I remember getting to those ovens and feeling a great sense of relief... until Gotdurt told us we still had a ways to go... :suicide:

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John did a little "extra" riding because we got separated. I donated my Gatorade because he was looking pretty beat. It was 100+ by noon...
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:tab Despite the suffering at the time, in retrospect I had a great time and would love to go back now that I have my KTM 530 :trust:
 
Hi Scott, we came in from the north, there are 2 northern trails, both quite difficult, but apparently we had chosen the hardest of the 2 according to the locals that where there!! Just our luck.. It really wasn't that difficult on bikes, but cars would be a very different story! There where a lot of loose rocks and boulders, it was made worse because we had to bump start Rman's bike if he stalled (Which he didn't) but it was always at the back of your mind!! The ride out (headed south) was just great until the treacle stream!! :lol2:

Gary
 
I couldn't remember if we were in the county with the nutcase sheriff or not.

He's not a nutcase to those of us who keep re-electing him. :sun:

You were in Pinal County which is run by Sheriff Paul Babeu, the one that was recently outed by his Hispanic boyfriend, but we're tolerant out here and he was re-elected along with Sheriff Joe.;-)

Quite a large number of the AZ Beemers are dual sport riders so if you want some local company next time just drop them a line on the forum...

www.azbeemers.org
 
That's a great story Gary, what a day that must have been.
Glad you managed a couple photo's!
 
Thanks for the pics and write up! :clap: Have to put this on my bucket list.
 
Gotta hand it to you guys for your "stick to it" attitude there in the swamps of Arizona.
Our total GPS mileage 'on the bike' may differ a little but mine shows 828 miles. So think about it, 828 miles of the most arid, parched and unforgivingly dry terrain I've ever ridden in my life and we go off and get hopelessly stuck in the mud at mile 827?!! :brainsnap Seriously, we were 1 mile from the truck!! :rofl: :doh:
 
That was some of the hardest riding I have ever done. It did not help that I was on a heavily laden and top heavy KLR 650 with stock gearing :doh: I remember getting to those ovens and feeling a great sense of relief... until Gotdurt told us we still had a ways to go... :suicide:
Man, you got that right, very challenging! I also was geared way too tall for that kind of riding as we'd anticipated quite a lot of highway miles returning from Las Vegas to SoCal via Death Valley and was able to get away with it on the Barstow ride.
Not so on the Coke Ovens ride! :eek2: :shame: If any of you folks have serious aspirations about doing this ride, a few words from the wise; gear low, pack light and if possible, wear platform shoes!! :lol2:
 
More pics and a few vids... After riding the LA-Barstow to Vegas we decided to stop by Florence, AZ on the way home and ride the Florence Coke Ovens. We arrived in Florence late and wound up at the delightful Blue Mist Motel for the night.

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Yep, in the end we couldn't justify the gas with two people.

The Blue Mist was kind of an odd deal. We rolled into town with no plans. This hotel had only one review and it was not favorable, but we checked into it anyway. It's across the street from one of the prisons. The manager allowed us to park across the spaces right in front of the rooms and, I think the charge for the two rooms was under $100.

m
 
Oops, I accidentally hit submit prematurely above ^^ so lets start the post again. :sun:

More pics and a few vids... After riding the LA-Barstow to Vegas we decided to stop by Florence, AZ on the way home and ride the Florence Coke Ovens. We arrived in Florence late and wound up at the delightful Blue Mist Motel for the night.

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ThrasherG developed a flat on the home stretch while returning to Palmdale (his 2nd of the ride :doh:) and rode it on in. Kudos to the 606, I've ridden mine flat a few times and it actually performs quite admirably. ;-)

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So off we go... We trailered to a parking area off N. Box Canyon Road and rode in from there. Ah, the mighty Saguaro Cactus, millions of 'em out there.

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Vid 1, mind you, I was foolishly riding with a broken kick starter and real tall gearing the whole time which wound up being a disaster waiting to happen. This is only the beginning of where the gearing became a problem, add that to a 13.5 to 1 piston and low RPM backfires. Luckily we planned for it and had a tow rope in the pack. It came in real handy more than once. :rofl:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnJRh2V1aE&feature=plcp"]Florence Coke Ovens-N. Box Canyon Rd. 1 - YouTube[/ame]

They don't call it 'Box Canyon' for nothin'. :lol2:

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Here's vid 2, edited slightly for colorful language. :mrgreen:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB4blE6jRvM&feature=plcp"]Florence Coke Ovens-N. Box Canyon Rd. 2 - YouTube[/ame]

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OK, here's vid 3, edited extensively due to very strong, offensive and scathingly blistering language!! :eek2: :miffed: :angryfire: :headbang: :rofl:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em1VbhN_KAs&feature=plcp"]Florence Coke Ovens 3 - YouTube[/ame]

Now people, hear me out, God love the video camera, but the latest modern day version of it simply lacks the 3 dimensional aspects to show basic elevation grades. At one point you can hear me say "I can't kill it", that was because if I did at that point there was NO push or pull starting options and if I went down and the engine died I was screwed, it was straight down or straight back up so I put it in neutral and held in the clutch in case it was knocked into gear and walked it down. Thrasher had a much easier go at it due to his extra 8 inches of leg.. hence my platform shoes comment above.^^ :lol2: At the end of that vid I was on the verge of blowing spit bubbles out of pure muttering delirium but, by golly we'd made it! :clap: :clap:

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Someone owes me a :chug: for dragging this sign all over ****'s Half Acre. :flip: :rofl:

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We met up with this group of side by sides and they were all scratching there heads asking where in the world we'd come from?

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We replied "From up there".
They looked at us with this incredulous stare of disbelief and I immediately knew there was a much easier way to get to where we were. Needless to say, we asked them for directions. :deal:

We spent some time looking for a way over the RR tracks but if you look at the Ovens on the Satellite map this is the trestle just to the south west. We couldn't find a river route so we wound up dragging the bikes over the tracks at the top. :lol2:

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I might also add that if you look at the satellite map you'll see that the RR trestle is only about 100 yards from a tunnel leading right back to the other side of the mountain on the same side of the river that we'd started. But :moon:, as luck would have it, the tracks were booby trapped with spikes along the inside and both outsides of the rails, apparently to keep like minded folks such as myself from cutting 25 miles off the return trip. :argh:

From where we had parked it was about a 15mi run but the detour was about 35mi. Whatever, we'd done the hard route so we figured we'd return via the "easy" route. Oh yeah, it was easy all right, it was quite fun.... up to a point that is. :wary: What happened was, we missed a turn and wound up at a locked gate at some kind of municipal looking facility and tried to detour around the perimeter along the fence. After looking at the satellite maps we had only missed the road by about 1/16th of a mile but due to our 'detour' we wound up on the Gila River bottoms. As we could see the river crossing less than 100yds away and the river bottom was apparently dry we rode along the bank up against the brush. Well, that wound up being a BIG MISTAKE!! It was only dry on the surface and we had one heck of a time getting through there. I had the easier time of it cause I went 1st and took the high line along the bank, Thrasher followed along the route I took but I had already sunk in so bad that he got stuck in my rut.

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I parked my bike on the bank..

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...and we spent the better part of an hour getting his bike out.:eek2: :doh: :rofl:

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And the whole time we were less than a mile from the truck.

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From there we loaded up and parted ways, ThrasherG headed back to Seattle and M and I headed back to Fayette County, TX. :zen:

As Leon Russell once put it so eloquently,.. we were "Strangers in a Strange Land".

Indeed we were.

R
 
RMAN/GARY/MERIDEN

THANK's for a great ride report...:clap:

sure wish i could have made it (the ride)

RMAN yer beer is on the way! (next-ride) all i have is COOR's :chug:



......lonnie........:pilot:
 
RMAN/GARY/MERIDEN

THANK's for a great ride report...:clap:

sure wish i could have made it (the ride)

RMAN yer beer is on the way! (next-ride) all i have is COOR's :chug:



......lonnie........:pilot:
+1.....and Rman I'll buy you that beer! Whatcha doing this week?
 
Speaking of beer :chug: I will be ready to drink some/a bunch the next time we get together :eat::rider::eek2:
 
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