Let me back up just a little. The route through the east side of the lake from a sheep Bridge to the bottom was anxiety producing. Yeah, the 550 was working, but no trial was showing up. The road was obviously there from traffic and I could use my phone to locate myself. But I knew I still had to get across the dam. When I talked to the Ranger the week before he asked with some skepticism what I was going to be doing after I crossed the Sheep Bridge. I got the feeling that some illegal activity has taken place back there before.
I tied to put him at ease by telling him I was a principal but he prob just heard I was a chemistry teacher in Breaking Bad.
My knight in shining armor. Remember those two white pickups?
This is Bill. He works for the Reclamation Department. He is biologist for Arizona. He was in one of the trucks. He was working the area with another guy who was working as a PHD guy. They were re-introducing some orange finned sucker fish back into the Verde River. The reason the gate was closed was because they had hundreds of thousands of dollars in monitoring equipment all along the east side of the river(over where I was) monitoring and tracking the dispersion of the fish they introduced by helicopter all the way up the Verde. They had tagged each fish with a special transmitter and set up multiple checkpoints for the fish.
Apparently the gate was locked to keep people out so they can’t steal their stuff. I asked him if he could open the gate. He said No, it was only operated by the University guy and he still had work to do. Bills job was to basically escort this guy around and provide oversight from the Reclamation Department. In his words, “his job was cake”. Notice the footwear. I believe him.
In my head, I am thinking ……….Cool story, all that is great……… how the Hell am I gonna get out of the jail that is this side. I asked him again about slipping through the gate. You don’t need to get through the gate if you are a good rider. Huh??
Bill showed me the path to freedom. Hell, he might as well been Andy Dufresne for all I know.
Bill said. “There is a path under the dam, but it’s tight.
Me: how tight??
Bill: real tight for a motorcycle.
He wasn’t kidding. Had I not cut my bars down, I would of had to pull it through.
I felt like the movie “Last of the Mohicans”. He said he has been below the damn with water going over. How cool would that be??
Just like Andy, I crawled through the newly half a mile and emerged out the other side a free man. There were two 90* corners I had to get the bike around but it was doable albeit with some scraping. And then I had to ride up the rocky assent.
If you notice in the pics from when I was below, guess who is going through the gate?? Bill said the guy was kinda stuck up.
I left the remoteness and started a long sandy trek back out to civilization. It was 20 miles to the north side of Cave Creek.
The views were still good, but the piles of deeps sand were. It.
The adventure was coming to a close. One last shot on the bike I had conquered both the terrain and my fears. I had ZERO drops. At least a half dozen dabs, and countless “whoa, that was a sweet move” as I made the whole route.
I finished the route without needing my 30oz MSR bottle. I I was gonna see how far I could really go on the 1.9 gal tank. She started gasping for fuel at exactly 92 miles so I switched over to reserve. I was still on dirt I rolled all the way to my BIL house. 21 miles later she was still getting gas out of the bottom of the tank. 113 miles round trip. 113/1.8 gallons come up to about 63 mpg. Zero issues after pounding the bike pretty good for 2 days.
I rolled in to my niece waiting on the porch. She was tracking me the last hour via “Find my iPhone ” First pic at 7:24 to this one at 3:46.
Not a dull moment. Completely awesome and so worth hauling the bike out.
How the KLX rides.
All I am thinking now is about the next destination. Thanks for coming along!
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