June 24-July 8th, 2013 Baumgarnter - Summer Ride (Part 1)

We made the trip from Pomeroy (Wayne’s Mom’s house) to our friends Norm and Lan’s place in Eagle on Monday.  We stopped there because Norm had bought a 2007 Suzuki DRZ 400S that he thought I’d be interested in.

Did I tell you what we are doing next summer (2014)? We are going to ride our dual-sport bikes on dirt roads from Virginia Beach VA to a beach in Oregon with our friends Lyon, Cindy and Bob.  It will be around 5000 miles and take about a month.  We’ll be camping most of the time.  When we decided to do this ride we had to make some decisions.  The biggest one was which bikes do we take?  I love my KTM 400, but it doesn’t have the sub frame to support 40-50 lbs. of camping gear.  Neither does Wayne’s KTM 525. Once I decided that the KTM wouldn’t do, I emailed Norm, thinking he might be ready to upgrade his DRZ to a newer one.  Instead he located this yellow baby for me.  It came with a big tank ( with a range of 250 miles, about) and a set of saddlebags.  I have since added a framework to hold the bags and a much better seat.  Wayne installed another power cradle for my Garmin GPS, a must for any trips we may take.

From Norm’s we headed to Baumgartner to camp on the south fork of the Boise River.  Every year we meet up with friends from all over the west to camp and ride. We hadn’t planned to get there on Friday, but it was so hot in the Boise Valley that we had to head up to a cooler location.

We got the river front camp site, and the rest of the gang moved in around us.

Over the weekend the rest of our group started to arrive. John and Michele joined us by the river while Cindy and Jim opted for a shadier spot nearby. 

JD and Raydonia snuck in along the river and Bob managed to snag the sand-beach spot.  There were many other groups that were also in that area, so it was a very busy campsite for the holiday week (4^th of July).

Michele at Deer Park 

While the boys were out trail riding, Cindy, Michele and I went for a little 38 mile ‘first ride’. We went down to Abbot Campground, across the bridge and up Abbot Gulch to the FS 166 Road.  After connecting with the 166D RD we headed up the trail to Grouse Butte, then rode the Blue Ridge trail along the ridge back to the Kelly Creek trail.  After a quick trip out to Deer Park (no deer this year) we then turned down the trail and back to camp.

Iron Mountain Lookout from Deer Park on the Kelly Creek Trail.

The next day I had my first ride on my new Suzuki. Michele and I took the roads while John and Wayne took some trails on our way to Ketchum ID.  We met up with Jim and Cindy in town and had lunch at one of the Mexican restaurants.  Also having lunch with some of his friends was the actor Richard Dryfus. Boy he still has that distinctive voice.  The Sun Valley area has more than it's fair share of celebrities living there. This is the first time in all the years that I have been going there that I saw a star that I recognized, other than in their cars driving by.  Some of our group wanted to stop and talk to him, but really...I think he's entitled to have lunch with his friends too!  On the way home we got caught in a rainstorm.  Huge drops, but it was so hot out that it really felt good.  The ride was 121 miles, and I really like my new bike! It is so smooth and easy to ride.

Lunch in Ketchum

Our next dual sport ride was one we do every year.  I was going to ride my Suzuki, but the battery was dead so I rode my KTM. This ride is 70 miles, going from camp at Baumgartner to Atlanta for lunch and back.  Raydonia and JD headed out first, and once I moved over to the KTM Wayne and I headed out behind them.

We took the James Creek road, which takes us past this water fall, which looks pretty good considering that water levels are so low.  The Anderson Ranch Reservoir which we drive by to get to camp is as low as we’ve seen it in years, at drought levels. And the South Fork Boise River where we are camped is very low this year.

 We both rode our KTM's that day

We had lunch at Riverside Campground on the Middle Fork Boise River near Atlanta, ID.  After which Raydonia and I headed back, and JD and Wayne went up to the Trinities to see how much of the burn area from last year is now open.  They came back with charcoal on their arms from brushing up against some burned trees, but most of the trails appear to be open.

The next day Wayne changed out my battery in the Suzuki so that I could ride the Trinity Lakes Dual Sport route. Our group included Bob, Cindy, Michele, JD, Raydonia and me. From camp we went to Featherville and headed out to Rocky Bar.  This old town is slowly being rebuilt.  There are people living here again. 

 

 

 

 This building is still waiting for some rehab, but check out that original bar. 

 The road from Rocky Bar to Trinity Lakes takes us past last year’s fire which is very evident up here,

 but life is coming back.

We stopped to check out Little Trinity Lake,

and then went to the big lake for lunch.

From there we went past the Roaring River Lakes and up to Trinity Look Out. 

The road we took to get up there

This has been a manned look out but not at the moment.

The views from 9500’ are pretty amazing.

We then continued down the Trinity Ridge Road to connect with the road to Falls Creek.  Then it was down to the Anderson Ranch Reservoir and the town of Pine for Ice Cream. 

Someone loaded for camping on a bike just like mine!

From Pine we went up the pavement to Featherville to complete our loop.

That was our last ride from that campsite, but stay tuned, more riding was in the future!

Next stop, Bull Trout Lake….

May 6-June 24th, 2013 Western Washington with Friends and Family…

After leaving Brazel’s we continued north to our friends Art and Wilma’s place in Bonney Lake WA.  We spent Tuesday going to RV dealers in the Fife area.  Our first stop was actually in Milton, right on the border with Fife.  Look what we found!!!

 Art checking out the 2004 Monaco Windsor.

 

 When we would first talk with a salesman, they always ask “What are you looking for?”  So we would give them our list.  It must be:

  38-40 feet long,      3-4 slides

400 Horsepower (Cat or Cummins) diesel with a side radiator

 

  2 sinks

  NO booth, must be table and chairs, with storage under the window

 Full closet and plenty of clothing storage in bedroom

  At least 2 full pass-through storage units underneath

 So when the guy from Northwest Camping Center in Milton heard that list he said he thought they had one that fit that description.  He took us out there and then left.  Most sales people graft themselves to your hip and don’t allow you to talk to your spouse in private.  I’ve tripped on some when I turned around too quick and had them standing right there.  But this guy, Chris, just left us alone to look.  We spent about 90 minutes going over everything, checking it out.  We decided we were very interested, but continued our rounds of all the other dealers in the area.  Sure enough, the next day we are back, with Art in tow, to take a test drive.  We also took it to the Diesel shop where Art works, to have the engine checked out.  Everything went good, so we made an offer and it was accepted.  

We had them add this for Wayne, the HD TV sports fan!!!!  It is nice to just push a button and have satellite TV. putting up the HD dish on the tripod was so hard, I thought we were going to divorce before we could get it set up some times!!!! 

 

On Thursday we headed up to Monroe to park our old coach at Brady and Shelly’s place before we met our daughter Becca and her boyfriend Bo for dinner in Everett.  We would spend the next week getting moved out of the old coach and ready to trade it in on the Windsor.

 

Becca and Bo

 From May 9^th until June 23^rd we spent time with our family and friends in western Washington, got moved into the new coach and then went to eastern Washington to visit Wayne’s family.

 The 'Sibs' with Daddy on his birthday (can you see the resemblance???)

 The 'Non-Sibs', also known as the spouses...

 We had dinner together again on Mom's birthday, raising a glass of her favorite wine in her honor

Our family

 I had to take a quick trip back to the Seattle area when my Dad ended up in the hospital, but he was back on is feet by the end of the week and I was on my way to Spokane. 

Parked in front of Wayne's brother Rick's place in Spokane

 

 From Spokane we went south to Pomeroy to visit Wayne’s Mom on our way to the 2013 Summer Ride which began at Baumgartner on the south fork of the Boise River.

May 6, 2013 – Brazel’s RV Performance Center

This post has been delayed  due to us having too much fun lately...  Sorry, no photo's, but it wasn't really that kind of stop!!!  This is our apologies to the nice guys at Brazels.  For more background, see March 10th post titled If Not for bad Luck...

We left Hillsboro on Monday morning and worked our way over to I-205 in order to miss the Portland morning traffic.  We continued north and stopped at our friends business, TrailTech in Battleground WA. After a short visit to confirm summer riding plans, we headed to Centralia WA to confront the company that had installed the ‘Performance’ chip in the motorhome.

Now that it is all over, I have to give these guys a huge amount of credit, for not losing their tempers with us.  We walked in, madder than mad about the blow-up of our motor, which we credited to their chip.  Jon Brazel was very calm, and listened to our rant before agreeing to get our money back on the chip which was no longer in our motor (having re-mapped the brain himself earlier in the process). He then suggested they put our coach on their Dyno machine, to see what was really going on.  Remember in Quartzsite, they claimed to have tested the motor and all was good, that was why they continued on and put in the chip.  They invited Wayne in to see the computer as they ran it through its paces. Sure enough at idle, all the numbers were in the normal range, but when they put it under load, the problem showed up.  First they changed the Mass Air Flow sensor and some of the numbers came back in line.  Then they changed the fuel regulator, explaining that they thought it was the fuel pump (they had been saying this all along) but this was a good first check.  They were surprised when the regulator turned out to be the problem. We’d had the fuel pump tested in Wickenburg and were sure it wasn’t the issue, so we weren’t surprised.

Jon charged us his cost for the parts and did not charge for labor, and got us our money on the chip back.  We had gone into his shop mad as can be, and left as happy customers.  We still had to suck up the cost of the new motor, but now the issues are taken care of, and we feel better about selling this coach, no more check engine codes!