October 8-10, 2013 - Travel to Reno

On Tuesday we left Idaho City, headed for Reno.  As always we had many good rides and a lot of fun in Idaho. We will miss all of our friends that we spend time with there, but we’ll return next year after we ride the Trans America Trail, also called the TAT.  The TAT starts in Virginia and ends in Oregon, staying on dirt roads 80% of the way. We decided to pre-ride part of it on our way to Reno.

 

 

We started down Highway 21 towards Boise

Fall color is coming to Boise

We traveled south on Highway 95

I planned our route on my computer, planning to camp along the highway about 15 miles north of McDermitt NV. I found an area that was on BLM land, and yet not too far off the highway. You never know what you are going to find. Not everything that you find on the computer actually works out in real life.  This time I lucked out.  It would have been nicer if the wind had ever stopped.   Even the cats weren’t that interested in going outside.

Heading down a small dirt road, looking for camping

There weren’t any trees to park behind, so we chose to park by some BLM equipment, feeling that people would leave the rig alone if it was near government equipment.

Wednesday we woke up to an even windier day.  It would rip the doors of the RV and trailer right out of our hands.  But we went riding anyway.  It was in the 40’s, so not real cold, but the wind chill factor made it feel like 25.  We started out following a track I made that would take us to intersect the TAT, the trail we will ride next year.  Unlike the routes I made for the Pahsimeroi, the roads on my maps are not all there anymore.  Fire has come through and obliterated many of them.  So we had to take the highway a bit, until I found a road that would work.

We started out across the desert

The clouds were pretty low

Obviously no cows in this area, there was still grass left to turn orange and contribute to the color

We found these hot springs

This was a bath house in the truest manner.  It was a covered pool.

It was a very hot fast stream

When we saw the hot springs from down the road we first thought that the steam was the dust from a car coming our way, then I thought maybe dust devils. 

Nope, it was a major hot springs.

It bubbles from the ground in many places, all of them very hot.  This resort may have been abandoned due to the water getting too hot to get into.  We couldn't find a cold water source to cool it down.

Checking out the old building

It really was a pool

From there we spent some time trying to get to where the TAT would cross our route. We followed cow trails and jeep roads across the desert until we got tired of crossing private land.  We then went really cross country to get to the Cordero Mine Road.  Here we picked up the TAT.  It was paved, but we soon left that to play in the dirt.

We started on a big car road

Went by some cool looking rocks

It was a long and winding road….

Disaster Peak is on the right, Little Peak on the left

We came pretty close to Little Peak

We went down China Creek, finding a place for lunch.  This area was part of a large fire area, looks like maybe 5 years ago

This old house was up Kings River

Along Kings River

On Log Cabin Creek

We continued following the TAT until we got to Denio Junction.  Not much of a town, just a couple of homes.  This put us on Highway 140.  We went north to Cottonwood Creek Road.  Here we found more private land, so we abandoned our planned route and after talking to a local and checking out his advice on my laptop (that I carried in my backpack for just this reason) we headed up the Whitehorse Ranch Road.  This was a big car road.  It was now after 4 PM and we wished we could find gas somewhere, just in case, but no such luck.  At one stop I decided to try to get my GPS to plan us a route back to camp, as I couldn’t figure out how to make some roads connect.  Sure enough (love my Garmin!!) I put in McDermitt and it created a route!

The long, very straight, White Horse Cutoff road saved us about 20 miles of cold highway riding

The route then had us turn left on the Oregon Canyon Road, which was part of my original return route.  This brought us to the highway, right across from where we were parked, how cool was that.  Our spot looked a little different, 3 trucks and trailers had come to camp near us, because they were white we saw them before our own rig, but we knew we were home.  It was just before 6 PM, the sun was still up and we had put in 176 miles.  We got to pre-ride some of next year’s route, and didn’t find anything real tough or scary.  When someone else plans a route, you never know what you are going to find.  I was happy with what we found.

Thursday was a travel day; we got to our new home in Reno in the afternoon. 

We passed by Sawtooth Mountain

We saw this strange cloud, maybe it’s a fire

We will be in Reno until the end of December when we will begin our next adventure, traveling to Daytona Beach Florida for bike week.  I may not post much before we leave as we will be working and don’t know how much riding we will be doing. But if we ride, I’ll post.  I promise!