Southwestern Adventure Motorcycle Blog
Welcome to the blog where I recount my time spent adventure motorcycling across the American Southwest. Although many of the posts are not finished, the rest of the pictures aren't up, and the compilation of my helmet-mounted GoPro videos has not been uploaded yet, I feel like I needed to at least post what I have here so far to share with you all before I become too sidetracked.
The posts go from newest > oldest but you can start from the beginning here. I am by no means an expert, I just got my first bike only a couple of years ago when I thought I wanted to be a hipster riding on a Triumph Bonneville or an old Honda CB through San Francisco (not saying that's not cool... well maybe those old CB's) but I caught the bug - and badly. It was liberating to get into riding and adventure riding. It's a dangerous but very fulfilling activity and hobby; and only if you are seriously considering it, I recommend it to you (and if so I'd love to hear from you).
I'd like to especially thank Bryan Register, Frank Avent, Jared Ziman, and Jim & Debbie Allen for their awesome friendship and hospitality during my travels. You guys rock and are true friends who I would return the favor ANY time! I'd also like to thank all those selfless people on the internet who share their experience to inspire me and their mistakes for me to learn from. If anybody is interested in trips like these or learning the intricacies of how your motorcycle (or any machine for that matter) check out a eveRide and KennyRaceBoy. Thanks again for reading - I hope you enjoy all of my favorite photos and thoughts below.
Vaya con Dios
-Doug
The Grand Canyon (South Rim)
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Sedona, AZ
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Superstition, AZ
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Coronado Trail, AZ
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Roswell, NM
Good Friday
My throttle grip detached from the control yesterday so I found an Ace Hardware early in the morning and super glued it back together. It set right away and I left Ace to head "downtown" to check out the tourist traps and UFO museum. I parked the adventure machine on main street right in front of the UFO museum. The docents and staff were extremely nice and I did enjoy myself at the museum. I was fascinated by the stories of "Foo Fighters" seen by pilots in WW2. Especially since the same "Foo Fighter" phenomenon just came up in the news that morning. At the end of the day, all of the tales told were astonishingly elaborate, imaginative, and ultimately very entertaining.
I had a late check out and was packed up and on the road before noon. I made great time to Alamogordo but then lost a bunch of time buying souveniers and trying to mail them. When I finally made it to White Sands, all of the campsites were filled. It was a shame. I tried to see if I could camp somewhere nearby but ended up calling it off and checked into a nearby Holiday Inn Express. Smart.
PS. My luck turned when I checked in. The guy behind the counter tipped me off to the Trinity Nuke Site being open tomorrow to the public. I think I will do that tomorrow.
PPS There was a Taco Bell accross the street. Living large with some quesodillas for dinner! As I walked back I got an awesome compliment by a stranger on my bike. Felt pretty good :)
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Dell City, NM
This day was maybe the scariest day on the road. Dell City was quite pleasent, but the nothingness north of Dell City caused some of the highest highs of joy and hope and lowest lows of fear and helplessness I've ever experieced in my life....It is mentally exhausting just to recant this story.
I left the Pine Springs campground and exchanged cheerful goodbyes with my new friends on the road. From there I headed back down the mountain and west on the desolate highway. It got even more desolate as I took one of the farm to market roads towards Dell City. I think I took 1526 but shouldve taken 1427, they both ended up in the city center (which is a tiny service station). Towns like Dell are intimidating since they appear poor and fear gets the better of uscausing us to imagine the worst in others, but inreality the people that i met there were some of the warmest and nicest people I met on my trip. The man behind the counter at the service station was warmhearted and helpful when I asked for directions. His good-t-do-ness put a smile on my face and made my morning.
Following his directions i headed north towards Pinon, NM and immediately took several wrong turns. I spent most of the morning back-tracking and by afternoon was beginning to get concerned for my fuel (even with filling up in Dell City).
I had left the gravel and was now on unmaintained dirt roads. There were no signs and many forks, forcing me to make calls based dead-reckoning. To make matters worse, the rough roads shook my compass off my handlebars and the sun felt like was directly above me for hours.
It was afternoon by the time i found my first sign (nearly 3 hours after setting off into the unmarked map territory). I was elated. I jumped for joy, sang, and fell to my knees. Tears of joy sprang from my jubilent eyes and ran over my smiling cheecks. I found the right direction to go! I wouldn't have to walk back to Dell City in the dark!
Only 30-45 minutes later, my KLR began overheating and then the righthand grip twisted right off the throttle conrol. While I was broken down on in the middle of the road, I would see the only other person in the New Mexico desert that day. A liquid-feed trucker that was driving down this rocky disaster pulled up next to me and asked if I needed help.
"Nope. I got it all handled."
Ten minutes later I fixed my bike by zip-tying the gripwire to the handlebar and barehanding the plastic throttle tube, but still had no idea where I was and how much longer it would be until I would find paved roads again.
After U-turns and doublebacking I pressed on through past the trespassing signs and after many bouts of doubt, I emerged onto the pavement...
There aren't words to adequately describe how overwhelmed with relief I was at that moment. I was so happy yet so sick I could vomit at the same time. I had escaped back onto marked territory, but was not out of trouble yet. The nearest town, Pinon, was still 15 miles away to the West; I needed to go to the East. I drove to Pinon to find that it doid not have any gas station. I doubled back to a dot on the map, Dunken. No fuel there either, not even any full-time inhabitants. The next nearest point on the map: Hope, 40 miles away.
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San Guadalupe, TX
At the ranger station Jeff Bridge's twin brother gave me the key to the 4x4 road to Williams Ranch. I drove down the mountian, found the trail, went in, locked my pans to a sign inside the gate, and made tore down the 4x4 path. My KLR was a whole new animal without the luggage on it and tearing through the Guadalupe Mountains was a blast. Words don't do the views justice. I can't wait to compile all my GoPro videos from the trip (that's going to take some time in the edit room still...).
After blasting around dirt trails all morning I rode up to the Carlsbad Caverns. I had a gas station ham and cheese sandwich and a Dr. Pepper for lunch. It wasn't terrible. Eventually, I wound my way up the Carlsbad cliffs to the cave entrance. The Caverns were pretty neat. It's funny but it reminded me of Disneyland (but formed by nature); it felt like a fantasyland inside the caves. It was truely a fantastic walk into the earth filled with beautiful sights. I wish I had somebody to OOH! and AHH! with...
After an elevator ride back to the surface, a greasy spoon dinner at the cafeteria, and a long ride back to a campsite to set up my tent in a whirlwind I tried sleeping as the tent flapped all night no matter how I tied the loose ends down.
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West Texas
The trails out of Big Bend were ROUGH. I stalled while nearly overheated on a near cliff-face and was covered in mud from several water crossings. I managed to cling to the front brake and wait for the bike to cool down before the big-thumping 650 carried us over the crest without injury. I didn't mean to leave Big Bend so late and I was severely behind schedule despite being up at sunrise. The trails ate me up plain and simple. Luckily I would learn as the days go by.
Arriving in Fort Davis was... simply gorgeous. it was amazing. Green rolling hills, red cliffs, high mountain peaks, and the McDonald Observatory atop the summit! Despite the dry, barren landscape of West Texas, the roads were soaking wet from the moisture of the clouds and mist hugging the mountains. Coming down the mountains lead me into these beautiful rolling green pastures; Fort Davis was a heavenly detour.
What fascinated me was the lack of wind today! I was cruising at 80 MPH on the KLR without having to tuck, no problem. The adventure machine carried me at 80 MPH all the way to Kent, which is not a complete ghost town where FedEx truckers rest and probably murder prostitutes. From Kent, I needed to hop onto the I-10 West. It was hell. The roads were smooth and pristine, but packed with trucks as if they were fired from a machine gun.
After exiting the interstate I filled up and headed towards the San Guadalupe Mountains via the Texas State Highway-54. W-O-W. As soon as I turned the corner around the hills I could see 100 miles to El Capitan! Roughly halway down the deserted strip of asphalt I stopped in the middle of the road and tooksome pictures. I had DREAMED of being in that specific place for a year since I found it on google maps. Completely deserted - as far as I could see...
I was sleeping this night in the San Guadalupe Mountain range at a National Park campsite. I didn't realize how much those suck. You'd think a campsite in a National Park would be out and exposed to the beauty of nature, but in reality it's just a parking lot for RV's and a million signs catering to the dumbest possible human beings so that they don't screw up the park. But I digress - it wasn't all that bad, there was some privacy, and the San Guadalupe campsite was probably the nicest National Park Campsite I camped.
...Anyways, I was lucky to find the camping warden and got a campground. As I was walking up to the well pump an old timer who had seen me ride in covered in mud, walks right up to me and said "you're a god dammed wild man." It felt pretty cool and the following conversation we shared over a full cup of Jim Beam is one to remember. The memories of this journey will come and go and the stories I tell will grow and shrink, but my participation in this journey at the present is so fulfilling and purposeful. The journey has no explicit purpose aside from the intrinsic joy of my own fulfillment. This trip obviously has no destination (aside from it's eventual endpoint), but every campsite I make and turn I take are just physical anchor points of my travels. "Be in the moment" is more than some rhetorical forward-thinking, often-parroted nonsense, but a call to notice your own participation at that moment in space and time.
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Big Bend National Park, TX
The morning was pretty uneventful until my first breakdown. I was almost hit by a golf ball and saw a couple F-5's coming in for landing at the air force base near Del Rio, but did start overheating near Pumpville. It's a town on a map but there's nothing there but power lines and some border patrol. Oil was slightly low, coolant levels were fine, this was the first indication of trouble for me. After letting it sit for awhile and having a snickers bar, I set back off.
Hwy 90 is a beautiful stretch of road accross south Texas. The wildflowers of yellow, purple, blue, and orange were all blooming and dramatic ravines carved by seasonal floods twisted and turned through the landscape.
I met a couple Brits bicycling accross America on Hwy 90. I had been on the road all morning and pulled over near them to take some pictures, they thought I was pulling over to kill them. I took it as a compliment since I was alone and didn't picture myself to be all that tough looking. They took my picture and me theirs and continued on our seperate ways.
Marathon is a funny town (or at least I thought so). The entire town exists because of tourism (as it is one of the only towns from which to enter Big Bend) and I got the feeling that all the locals there HATE tourists. I had an awesome lunch at a gas station in town and rode south towards the Big Bend and the border.
The guy at the gate to the park was really helpful and I arrived at Panther Junction (just in time). I decided on a site on Old Ore road a few miles north of the border. The dirt trails were tough and some areas were really challenging. I almost lost it a couple of times in the loose stuff and my suspension bottomed out at least twice with the bike fully loaded. After several hours I finally reached the site; I was so excited that I found it before sundown and revved my engine, doing donuts in the gravel before peeling out down the access road. After setting up the tent and making dinner it was time to call it a day.
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Bracketville, TX
After my goodbyes and some bomb Torchy's tacos in the morning I hit the road early. There was some bad crosswind (although not nearly as bad as it would be later on in my journey) and the bead on my front tire hadn't settled causing some wobble on the way to San Antonio. I nearly lost it all when changing lanes through the combined crosswind and slipstream of a large trailer, but arrived in San Antonio safely. I was here to see The Alamo.
I never learned the story of the Alamo in my formal education from either public or private schooling, but it is a truly inspiring yet heartbreaking story of courage, defiance, and the diverse make-up of Texas.
The Ballad of the Alamo - Marty Robbins
I toured the chapel and barracks which were full of artifacts. After deciding to stay for lunch I sat and reflected in the courtyard within the fotress walls before hitting the road again. It was gorgeous and I rode for miles on the open road towards west Texas via Hwy 90. By Hondo I had broken my horse and the front bead had finally set, reducing the wobble to be hardly noticable. Halfway through D'Hanis or Sabinal I messed up by turning my petcock to reserve (without looking) and actually turned it to OFF. I spent about 20 minutes on the side of the road thinking I ran out of fuel until I actually read that I had pointed the needle to the OFF position. After that blunder I filled up and rode on through Chuck Norris country - The Badlands. It was gorgeous and the Mesquites in the springtime turned the countryside into an endless lime-green horizon.
Arriving in Bracketville for the night I checked into an old Army Barracks turned motel on former Fort Clark. It was cheap, comfy, and the pizzaria accross the road made great pizza to go with a couple mexican cokes.
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Austin, TX
The day of reckoning has finally arrived and I am setting off on my trip.
I woke up with a bit of a hangover after last night's send off at Mitchell's Grille and started loading my soft bags onto the bike. I struggled to secure my backpack in front of my duffel bag -- once I finally did there was no room left for me and the bike was weighed way too far down! The problem with leaving from my parents house is that in their concern to make sure I was prepared they had probably loaded an extra 20 pounds onto my bike... don't ask me how.
I took off the backpack and duffel bag on the back of the bike, opened the panniers, and began chucking all of the clutter into a big pile: extra battery chargers, a dozen chapsticks, unnecessary food and supplies, the second (and third) extra hoodie, my steel hatchet, and the backpack itself. Anything I could find in that frantic panic that could shed even a few grams of weight was tossed aside. I reloaded the contents of what was in the two bags into my duffel bag and realized that even still I was over-packed and over-loaded.
It was already after noon and it would take too long to comb through and scrutinize everything more thoroughly; I must make due. I walked back into the farmhouse and had a last sandwich with mom and pops before zipping up my jacket and throwing a leg over the saddle.
I wasn't used to the extra weight as I rolled out the barn door and onto the gravel. The bike was squirrely as I rode down the driveway and onto the county road, but once I reached tarmac it was smooth sailing. I stopped by grandma's apartment and wished her goodbye and to get well soon from her surgery scheduled the next week, then was finally ready for the multi-hour journey ahead to Austin.
Austin is an awesome city in the heart of Texas. My buddy Bryan Register has a pretty sweet gig at a cool new company in Austin and I was excited to ride into town and have a great time.
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It was a beautiful spring day in Texas: warm 80 degree weather, blue skies, and endless hilly green fields. The first hour was a blessing as I rode through Clifton, Valley Mills, Crawford, and McGregor, but then I reached the interstate and I realized that I may run into trouble over the next 4000 miles. On the country two-lane highways I was cruising at a comfortable 55mpg taking in the scenery scantly noticing the shortcomings of the adventure-mobile.
After all of the work I had done on the bike, I hadn't broken it in yet at highways speeds. The new front tire bead hadn't yet settled into its groove and caused the most woeful wobble. In all, the next hour and a half of off and on 80mph/traffic was really harshing my mellow after my relaxing country ride. The engine was also giving me unpredictable power for about 15 minutes while riding the interstate trying to keep the needle at 75. I backed down to 60 and rode with the trucks in the right lanes the rest of the way.
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Upon my arrival it was right to the Rainey St. bars for some brews. After a good time we ended back on dirty ol' 6th Street. Though "dirty 6th" gets a bad rap, I love all the dirty bars and live music. It's a damn good time. Though only having lived a year in Austin at this point, Bryan is probably the best guy to show anybody around this city - knows all the great spots, knows how to country dance, knows all the regulars, and just doesn't say no to a good time. We ended the night at Friend's bar after a few more drinks; there Bryan got called out on stage to sing the final drunken song of the night: Sweet Home Alabama. We stumbled back home and slammed some water to sober up since we both had early mornings ahead of us - Bryan was going on a big hike with all his new gear and I was driving west. Successful night.
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Planning and Preparation
To begin, this was a trip I had been dreaming of since I wanted to be a cowboy at two years old. The desert in the American Southwest is a beautiful place to be in between winter and summertimes. And at this age, at this point in my career I wanted to take a trip -- by myself. There's really not much more to it; I'm not out here to 'find myself' - whatever that means - I wanted to finally take a trip like this before it was too late.
I could've had a little bit more fun at the bars, could've gone out a few more nights, could've bought a nicer motorcycles, could have done any number of things but over the past year I was saving up for this.
Hey, that's a weird looking motorcycle, it kinda looks like a dirt bike! I guess you could profile this type of cross-country ride as "Adventure Motorcycling." There is a rather loose definition for Adventure riding, and is mostly encapsulated in the first word of the phrase: "Adventure". ... But I'm going to come right out and say it, it has to do more with the look of the motorcycle. Honestly, you can have an adventure over mountain trails and paved roads on an old Harley or moped across the Australian Outback (yes, for real, it's been done before and is actually quite popular). An "adventure" (or "dual-sport") bike can be profiled simply by the way it looks -- a lot like a dirt bike, but more road-worthy.
The iconic image of these bikes originated from thoroughbred endurance motorcycles which had evolved from the 1979 Dakar Rally from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal, spanning vast stretches of roads and desert and has continued every year. The rugged, Euro-style of bike arises from its practicality in a vast range of environments: long stretches of highway, winding tarmac, gravel roads, sand, mud, and water crossings. Since the rise of Islamic Republics and general instablility in Northwestern Africa, the race has moved to South America since 2009.
The motorcycle I'm riding is a Kawasaki KLR650 and can be called a "dual sport" motorcycle, which essentially means I can ride on and off road. A modified version (not much differently modified than mine) is currently used in service by the Reconnaissance Marines of the US Marine Corps. The KLR650 has a small, but fanatical following for its proven reputation. First of all, it is incredibly cheap; for less than a quarter of the cost of a brand new BMW adventure bike you can have what is essentially the AK-47 of motorcycles. The KLR650 is simple and reliable, yet rugged, sporting a thumping single-cylinder 650cc engine, and can found all over the world. Thanks to its popularity and commonness, replacement parts can be found much more easily for the KLR650 whether you are in Denali Alaska or Baja California or Tierra del Fuego.
My trip will take me across six states in 30 days using primarily deserted state highways and dirt roads. I will sleep in campsites, roadside, and treat myself to a nice motel every once in awhile once I start to get too smelly.
I have extensively planned out my stops, miles per day, and landmarks prior to leaving and aim to make the most of my time rather than just roaming around with nothing to do. I have tried to make it manageable, but I know it won't be easy.
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