Since two of us live in areas with real winter, naturally, they are starting to get itchy about taking a ride. A text conversation ensued about possibilities for a get together. I knew those two were just wishing upon a star – it’s late January, way too early to get serious for them. Our third friend is here with me, but alas we learned that he and his wife were pulling the camper toward south Texas for a while.
But then the juices started flowing for me. A nice dual sport ride would be great. The weather forecast in southern Mississippi is perfect for camping – 40s overnight, 60s during the afternoon, and sunshine. I’m a member of two Facebook groups that focus on Dual Sport riding in southern Mississippi, and as luck would have, one of them is having a group ride on Saturday. They meet at a campground just outside of the Desoto National Forest.
That sealed the deal. In a matter of an hour, just sitting in the chair dicking around with some buddies on the phone, a ride adventure was started. I hope you enjoy the pics.
Day 1: Lafayette, LA to Wiggins, MS. Approximately 225 miles.
I packed the truck on Thursday and Friday morning after coffee, I kissed wifey goodbye and off I go. The 4-hour drive to the campground was uninterrupted and before noon, I arrived at the Flint Creek Water Park Campground:
https://msgulfcoastheritage.ms.gov/natu ... ater-park/
This is an enormous campground, encompassing over 3,000 acres. I get to the front office and the lady behind the counter couldn’t be more friendly. Her southern drawl was addictive, and in usual fashion, within a minute, I was dragging my words and adding syllables at will. After a brief chat about nothing in general, she showed me a map of the park and informed me of a “first come, first serve” area. I would go pick my site, setup camp, and later in the day go back to the office and settle up. Nice.
This will do just fine.
The camp sites here are very spacious with a good use of trees and shoreline for privacy. The bathhouse was spotless with hot water. There’s plenty of dead wood on the ground to gather for all the campfire you want. This is gonna be great.
I made a sandwich and enjoyed the lake view. With half the day remaining, I saddled up the old Bush Pig and took a ride. During the summer, with the water slides running, I’m sure it’s quite a shit show, but now – this is quite nice.
I downloaded the GPX file for tomorrow’s route onto my Garmin XT. I decided to just wander a little bit near Wiggins, using the route as an electronic “tether” to make sure I didn’t get too far off course. It didn’t take long for me to find some good stuff.
The Desoto National Forest is concentrated in the southeastern part of Mississippi, and is composed of mostly pine trees that are managed with clear cutting and selective cutting forestry techniques. The soil here is sandy clay and what few indigenous rocks exist are mostly sandstone, soapstone, and some soft quartzes.
The Dual Sporting here is fast and easy. The map is spot-on accurate and it’s a very nice place to ride. I putt putted around for 40 or 50 miles and about 4:30, found my way back to my campsite just in time for happy hour.
Now past dark and my stomach is telling me it’s time to do something, culinary wise. While packing yesterday, I scanned the freezer for some cooking ideas and found some good choices.
Hamburgers tonight.
The BBQ grill at the campground was separate from the campfire ring, so I’ll just cook dinner over my snow peak stove.
Pro-tip: A Bagel makes the PERFECT moto campsite bread. It travels quite well and you can use it for everything – including as a hamburger bun. None the less, it of course is carb heavy, so I’ll do one burger with and one without.
With the temperature dropping, after dinner, I stoked up my campfire and got down to some serious business.
Yesterday, my neighbor knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted this whiskey. Is that a rhetorical question?
(delicious)
I am quite content with myself and my thoughts.
And of course, I brought treats!
During Happy Hour, a gentleman pulled up in a golf cart and gave me 10-15 pieces of nice split dry firewood. I invited him over for some fellowship and about 9 pm, he and his wife showed up. We had a nice conversation for a while, until I told them honestly that I was fading in the chair. I bid them goodnight and slipped into my sleeping bag.
A nice day by myself.
Day 2: 140 miles on the Bush Pig, Desoto National Forest.
The whiskey does what it does, and I slept like a baby on top of BOTH my air mattress and a thermo-rest mattress. I got up before the light as my bladder could wait no longer. On the upside, I got to the shoreline just in time for the show.
41 degrees this morning, so I stoked up the fire to go with my coffee.
After breakfast, it was go time as I’m meeting the guys at the head of the campground at 9:00 am. With a few minutes to spare, I stopped at this part of the lake to take in the morning light. Looks like it’s gonna be a great day!
Lots of riders already assembled at the meeting location.
We were 20 riders all together – a big group by any standard. Neil (the organizer) herded the cats together, said a few expected words, and soon enough, we were on our way.
I have ridden with a few of these guys (and a couple of ladies too!) before, but for the most part, I don’t know these people. They certainly seem nice enough but even so, I started out close to the back so I could watch how they ride. With only a couple of exceptions, this group is clearly experienced and it didn’t take long for me to filter my way a little more forward to a sub-group with riders closer to my style and speed. I have the route on my GPS, but many do not and at road changes, sometimes there is a little confusion. But it sorts itself out and we are doing just fine.
Yesterday morning, this area got about ½ inch of rain and it was just enough to keep the dust way down, another strong consideration in a group this size.
As far as I can tell, we’ve got the entire forest all to ourselves.
And that was a very good thing, for more than one reason. As an outsider, I’m holding a lot of my opinions to myself, not wanting to come across as a “know it all”. But there is one thing about the way this group rides that really concerns me. On the left hand turns, a lot of them are WAY over on the left side of the road. If a vehicle is oncoming, they are sitting ducks as they cannot see much around most of these curves. It worried me, and at a stop, I couldn’t help myself. I befriended a young man on a KLX300, which I found out was his first motorcycle, and this was his first off pavement ride. I watched him a bit and he’s doing very well. But he followed another rider around a few left handers way over, and at a stop, I kindly told him that he’d be much safer on the right. My advice was well received.
We go about 30-ish miles and when the mood strikes the leaders, we stop. It’s quite a nice day today.
One of our group just purchased this CR Moto Ibex 450. He has a You Tube channel and among other things, he does reviews on Dual Sport bikes. He will keep this one for a month or two, and then sell it.
I gotta say, this bike has a lot of appeal to me. It does feel a bit top heavy just sitting on it. I rode behind this guy for a stint, and it’s got plenty of power for sure.
At this stop, some of the slower riders were a little confused and unfortunately, a lady on a big BMW GS accidentally rear ended another rider at a slow rate of speed. The rider she hit went down, but she stayed upright. We heard the whole thing from a short distance and walked over to check on them. The hit rider was fine, and he mentioned that the bike hit the top of his boot. I took an opportunity to tell the Newbie, who was wearing hiking shoes, to buy a good pair of riding boots. On the dirt, I feel strongly that your feet/ankles are most susceptible.
Regardless, no harm, no foul.
Also at this stop, some of the slower riders didn’t wait at the road turns to see the rider behind them before turning. This caused a couple to lose the route. Neil was prepared for this and used his BMW GS to cut them off on the pavement and wrangle them back to the group. We had a pow wow about it and Neil asked me if I would lead the ride so he could ride sweep and keep everyone in the group. No problem.
And so – off we go!
We got to the map dot town of New Augusta at the north end of the forest about noon for lunch at a fast-food joint. I wish I would have known this beforehand; I would have made my own lunch, but the Grilled Chicken sandwich was good enough.
After lunch, I led us back into the forest through the Camp Shelby area.
This is an Army training site within the National Forest. During lunch, Neil informed me that if a road on the route had a closed gate on it, just stop and we can re-route. Apparently at times, the Army does their maneuvers in an area and they close the gate to keep us out.
No issues with that today, though.
I really enjoyed riding through this part of the forest.
I’ve had my Bush Pig almost four years now. In that time frame, I’ve only managed about 8,000 miles. At this rate, this puppy will last forever.
Honestly, I can’t think of a better Dual Sport bike for me.
I keep leading us on the route, stopping at every road turn to wait for the next group to show. Now later in the afternoon, the route takes us on a gas line right of way. I asked some of the guys if it was legal for us to ride this. They didn’t know, but one guy correctly mentioned that there was no gate and no signage prohibiting us. That of course, doesn’t make it legal, but at the time, it sounded good enough for me and so… off we go!
This was nice and it was real fun …. Until it wasn’t. We get to the bottom of a hill and it turns into a swamp. I stopped and walked a bit of it. Some of the others continued, but I took a look at the map and figured I could double back and easily go around it. Neil was waiting back at the road with a bunch of the others and indicated that he forgot to tell me about this part – no harm, no foul.
We ran pavement around the block and while the others finished up the route, I doubled back from the other side to try and find the crew that ran the swamp. I got within 500 yards of where I left them, and no sign. So I turned around and caught up with the others at the Ice Cream store in Wiggins, MS.
Soon the rest of them found us, and they were all wet to some degree. I made the right choice.
After ice cream, I thanked Neil and the others for the company and the ride. I had a great time with those guys (and gals) and will ride with them again.
I rode back to the campsite, took an early shower to wash off the road, and then sat down for Happy Hour.
Then I got to working on dinner, starting with the pork chop.
I prefer to cook at the campsite instead of eating at a restaurant. This way I can drink without worry about driving/riding, and choose something a little healthier to eat.
Bon Appetite!
I put the speaker on the Bluesville XM Channel and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
What a fantastic day!
Day 3: Another 110 miles on the Bush Pig, then home.
I woke up with the crows as usual and again, quite cool with the temperature in the lower 40s. After breakfast and coffee, I packed up my tent. While doing so, I met a park worker and asked him if a late checkout would be Ok – 4 pm is no problem. I’ll be gone by then.
But in the meantime, it’s gonna be another terrific day and I might as well ride some more while I’m out here. The Camp Shelby area yesterday was quite nice, so I decide to go back there and explore more. I took a more direct route that way, running about 12 miles on pavement to the edge of the forest. Again – using the route from yesterday on my GPS as a guide, I started wandering some more.
I started looking for “side roads” to try and explore, and I found some wonderful 2-track stuff.
This is a terrific area to ride.
I found this area that had a bunch of containers that were mocked up to look like a village in the Middle East, presumably for Army training.
It was kind of cool to walk through this place.
A little further up the road, more of the same.
What a day!
This area looks like a firing range of some kind – maybe for larger guns. There was a sign that said “Road Closed”, and even though it didn’t look closed, I heeded it none the less. No point in getting run off today.
This hunk of forest is enormous – it just keeps going and going and going….
I stopped at this fork in the road to eat my sandwich.
I took the right fork and got back into some really good 2-track stuff.
I got back to the campground about 2:00 pm. I loaded up the truck and made the 4-hour trek back home with no problems.
So there it is – 3 days, 300 Dual Sport miles, a couple of nice campfires, and part of a bottle of good whiskey. I found a place to ride, and made some new buddies.
Not bad for late January.
Stay thirsty, my friends….
