OK... My turn I guess.
Ever have one of those trips where try as you might... things just seem to hic'up, despite the best of intentions? Well... that was my trip.
Wednesday, also Halloween, was a pretty easy day for work. I had a meeting that morning near the house which lasted through lunch, and then the rest of the day was for me to do as I pleased. So I head to the house, and give the KLR a bath as well as my truck and then ride the KLR around a little bit while it dried. And to make sure that my recent maintenance (Sprockets, Chain, Tire, Oil & Bath) left me with no surprises. Satisfied that the green machine was good to go, I loaded it on the trailer and strapped it down.
Next was the GS. I take it off its center stand from its home in my garage and I hear a funny, “tink… tink… tink…” of metal bouncing off the bike and concrete. Well it turns out that a pivot bolt that secures the center stand had sheared leaving its threaded end well in place.
So on the trailer it goes, (with out a bath), and on to the near by dealership to see if they can help me. Sure enough they can, and I am back at the house.
I finish packing up and making ready for the trip, and go inside to try and take a nap. As I am to meet up with Squeaky & tjbrandt50 around 9:30 tonight.
Between the phone and Trick or Treater's I was unable to get my nap that I wanted, but I did rest. So around 8:15 or so I leave the house, top of the tanks with diesel and make my way over to where Squeaky works. Where I meet tjbrand50 and he and I load up his & Squeaky bikes. Squeaky of course shows up just as we are finishing up and lends a hand (pickture her clapping).
When she told me that she would be in her PJ's I intially thought that she was joking... but as you can see she was not.
We get everything secured and hit the road. We make it all of 9 miles or so and I notice a strap already working it's way loose, so we stop. That went over like a lead balloon... All fixed and away we go. We make it all the way to San Antonio without incident, but for our exit being closed due to construction which took a couple of minutes to sort out. But no real difficulties. We continue onward to Junction where we make a pit stop, get coffee/sodas & sugary snacks.
Now as you have read earlier I did have a bit of a fuel delivery issue. I don't want to say that I ran out... as I had been watching my fuel pretty closely ever since the low fuel warning light came on too early in our trip. You see, I have 2 tanks, a Main and an Auxillary, together I can go 900/1000 miles when not pulling anything. Anddepending on which trailer I have hiched up and how heavilly loaded I can go 500 to 800 miles. I had budgeted 650 or so with the load I had this night. So my planned fuel stop was Fort Stockton. As I pulled into the truck stop and I do mean while my drivers side door was right beside the fuel pumps, albeit on the wrong side of the pumps, fuel is no longer delivered to the injectors. I will refrain from repeating the pleasantries that I spoke to my truck mates that morning. But lets just say that Mother would be very disappointed in me. Fortunately I was able to get help from a couple of different sources and Jaime (HY-MIE), had me fixed up in no time. Total time spent (minus fueling up), was around 30 minutes without forward progress.
Anyway after all is said and done we arrive the campground 1:00 later than what was projected when we left Houston. Not too bad I don't think.
We unload the bikes... only to find out that my KLR will not start. This just beats all. That bike was running fine prior to leaving houston. Heck it ran fine just about every weekend since I bought that thing last July. I am at a loss for words. So no bad dirt roads for me this weekend.
Oh well. This riding in a group thing may be fun too.
We take a nap... well we take many small naps due to chasing the shade. For it to have been in the low 40's driving into the park. It did not take long for it to warm up. We eventually wake up and go ride a little.
We ride over towards Boquillas Canyon where we take turns hamming it up for the camera.
I couldn't resist taking this shot of tjbrandt50 taking a shot of Squeaky.
I wonder how many folks actually make donations?
We leave the canyon and head over to the Hot Springs. Prior to heading down the road Squeaky and I both ask tjbrandt50 if he was comfortable riding it and he didn't even flintch, "Lets Go, I am following you two!". So off we go.
Who knew that a Connie was also a dual sport bike?
We make it to the parking area, without issues, and I think everyone enjoyed the curvey, bumpy, rocky, road that allegedly has some pretty big cliffs on it.
Here are Squeaky and tjbrandt50 infrom of the giant palms...
From here we walked down to the hot springs and and then hiked out. When we remounted we decided to ride up to the basin and watch the sun set. Truthfully I was wanting to get a bite to eat, and even though I was told that DFW_Warrior would be cooking for all, I did not feel comfortable free loading like that. So we go get a bite to eat and then road back to the camp site where to my surprise everyone else was there, waiting on us... and DFW_Warrior was COOKING FOR EVERYONE!
I guess for the second day I was having too much fun riding the roads to take too many pictures. Here is a pic of DFW_Warrior at canyon pull out on 170.
The little town where we ate lunch
While in Presidio I ran over to a Autozone and bought a new battery for the KLR and then rejoined the group. We rode 170 again back to the park, but made a quick stop here...
After we had our "Been There" shot with the camera's we road on to the park gate. I let Squeaky know that I was not going to follow the group up to the basin, but was going to ride Old Maverick Road... She said that she wanted to follow me too. So off we go.
We stopped at Luna's Jacal and talked about how it must have been like for him all those years.
Then for no real reason other than to see what was there we made our way down to the Terlingua Abajo. I must say that this was a very challenging road with wash outs and boulders and yes tree limbs.... But all we found was this when we got to the end.
So we did the Griswald thing and then made our way back up to the trail and picked up the Old Maverick Road again. Eventually, a little dusty, but no worse for wear we make the end.
Well I say that we made it no worse for wear... but there is a story here. You see, Old Maverick Road exits just north of Saint Elena Canyon. So we head down to the scenic look over and again do the griswald. It is getting pretty late in the day, and I am wanting to get back to camp to enjoy DFW_Warriors cooking. So I make my way through the gears rather smartly and having a ball leaning and twisting on Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. Every once in a while I would slow up and Squeaky would catch back up. Then I would go again. Well this one time that I got to a straight away to hold up and check on my riding partner... she was not immediately coming up on my like she has done previously. So I turn around and go just a little ways and we meet each other. So I turn back around and I catch up to her in the twistys to see a pretty funny thing. He license plate flopping in the wind like a kid with a dead rat on a string tied to a stick. It took a little while for her to realize I was telling her to STOP as she was despirately trying to motion me to go on. So she stops, and I politely put her plate in in pannier and hopped back on my bike. Not really certain she knew exactly what I was doing. I must say that I was laughing pretty hard.
The last day of riding took us up the road to Fort Davis.
Here we are making our way there...
And of course I had to take the obligatory picture in front of Jeff Davis County Courthouse.
We all had a great lunch at the "Drug Store" in Fort Davis and the ride up to the Observatory. While we were there I thought I was having a flash back to being a kid in front of a black and white TV... But it was different some how??
Shamille, Shomazzile Houseenfieffer Incorpated ...
On the way back to camp I make a new friend...
We all had a good time telling stories reminiscing the weekend and enjoying DFW_Warriors catering, and Beemerchef's tales.
Then it was time to say goodnight & good bye's to all and hit the sack as we all had a long ride tomorrow.
For me this was a trip to be remembered thats for sure. Thanks for letting me tag along.
Duke
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We need to do a BIG camping event, somewhere that will be most likely to draw a large group, then have a camp cook off 
You, Cagiva549, Tx Rider and a few others could compete in the TWT Camp Cook Smackdown 
Maybe the TWT Iron Chef?
'splain please... 
