March 6-11, 2014 - Bike Week, without the Crowds

On Thursday we began to break camp while the skies opened up and poured on us.  At one point we gave up, grabbed our books and read for half an hour while we waited for the rains to quit. Eventually we were able to go outside and continue with our chores. After all we had to be out of our campsite by 1 PM.

We arrived at the Mud Muckers ATV Park, which they advertise as the World’s Largest Off-Road Family Mud Park. At 11,000 acres it is made up of pine forest, cow pastures and mud bogs. We were early, the gates didn’t open until 3, but we waited in line with a bunch of other early birds. Once the gates opened, we all headed into the cow fields to find a place to park.

 Because we were early, there was plenty of room to maneuver the Beast around, although we still got it stuck in the mud.

 My boys are very tired.  The flash woke them both

Not much room left by race day

The GNCC (Grand National Cross County) series is for both quads and bikes. Practice began on Friday.  It was still cloudy and cool so I stayed in to catch up on the blog and get our taxes done.  Thank God for Turbo Tax!!  Wayne rode his bicycle around and checked out places to watch the action. On Saturday the sun was out and race day had arrived!  I love the energy of this type of event.  Just wandering around camp and the pits is really electric!  I hadn't realized how much I miss it.  I guess Wayne needs to start racing again, or we need to find a series to follow around the country.

We watched racing all day, and because it was quads I left my camera behind.  It’s too bad, because in hindsight the photos would have been great.

 Sunday was all bikes!

 And they’re off!!

Out across the cow fields

 In the woods they found a bit of mud

 Hard to tell who is who!

 Hey, don’t roost the photographer

When the morning session was over, our favorite rider for that session, Kacy Martinez of the WXC class (Women’s Pro Class) was second over-all!! Usually we would have rooted for Maria Forsberg, who we have known since she was part of the 12 & under Brat Pack riding around the local enduro pits in Washington.  Too bad for us that she retired last year!  Maria, the most-winningest off-road female racer, has had a remarkable career. Over the past 10 years racing for KTM, she has collected 9 National Championships (GNCC, WORCS & Endurocross) and 3 X-Games Gold Medals.  

Kacy won the WXC class; which was huge, with twenty two women on the starting line!  I think the only the Sportsman A & B had larger classes.  It’s nice to see so many women come out and race!

In the afternoon the Pros and Pro2 lite’s were on the starting line.  Changes were made to the course due to too much….mud.  It was routed out farther than we could get to, and and the course was cut down to 8 mile/lap.  The Ladies did 11 mile laps.  Hmmmmm

Charlie Mullins on his KTM won the Pro class.  Our PNW connection Ricky Russell of Duvall Washington was second in the Pro2 Lites.

After the racing was done, Wayne made an executive decision to skip the Alligator Enduro because he was worried that we’d get the ‘Beast’ stuck in that field they were camping in.  We continued southwest, heading for the Ocala National Forest where we knew we could camp for the night. Along SR 40 we passed the Volusia Speedway where many motorcycles were parked.  Once we got camp set up and the internet running I looked them up.  Sure enough that was day 1 of three days of racing for Vintage bikes and Amateurs. We had a day to spare before my friend Linda arrived, so I guess now we had a plan.

 We got there during practice and immediately went into the pits.

 We saw some really cool bikes

 Flat trackin’ a 525

 See the left-side hand shifter???

ZZZZZZ-Zooming!

 Color matched wheels…

 The pits

We watched 1 practice session, 42 heat races and 30 finals.  The youngest rider was 5 years old on his stock 50 cc Yamaha and the oldest was 78 riding his vintage bike.  Can you imagine taking your 5 year old aside and telling him "Go fast, turn left".  ;-)  They had lots of different classes.  My favorites were the 5-11 year old 65 cc modifieds, the 7-11 y/o 85 cc modifieds and all the brake-less classes.  Yes, it is not enough to take off the front brake (which they all do) this class had no rear brakes either!  Yikes!!!!

 Camp was a paved ORV parking lot in the National Forest, nothing fancy but it worked and the cats could be outside.  They LOVED it!

 We stayed there 2 nights. Then we spent a day trying to find all the stores we needed in Orlando.  Wayne and I don’t really enjoy the crowds at the theme parks, so we didn’t bother with any of them.  We spent the night in a rest area, preparing to pick up Linda at 9 am the next morning.  She’ll stay with us for 15 days, it should be a ball!!

March 2-6, 2014 -- Preparing for Bike Week

Connie, our neighbor at Little Willies had spoken very highly of a campground in the Ocala National Forest, Salt Springs CG.  We had thought to go to an ORV campground, Big Scrub, but the USFS site said the roads to it can be filled with soft deep sand.  This bothered us, after all the Beast (the motorhome) and the Toad (our tow vehicle, Wayne’s rolling man-cave) are extremely heavy and getting them stuck in soft sand 5 miles from nowhere is not on our To-Do list. So we followed Connie’s advice and when to Salt Springs.

Monday was our first test-camp trip on the DRZ’s. We spent the morning getting the rest of the gear together and loaded on our bikes.  We left the coach and the cats at Salt Springs and headed via back roads to the Mud Muckers property outside of Bunnell. 

 

This is the smallest ferry I've seen this trip. We opted not to ride it across the lake.

Mud Muckers will be the location of the season opener of the Grand National Cross County (GNCC) series.  We plan to come and watch, but we wanted to see what we would be taking the Beast and Toad into.  Everything looked good, so that plan was still on. 

From there we picked up a mail packet at the Bunnell post office, and then headed to the Atlantic coast.

 

We noticed that these beaches were NOT white sand like the Gulf Coast, but a regular tan colored sand.

 Surf's up!!

We traveled south through Flagler Beach and Ormond by the Sea. We had reservations at Tomoka Beach State Park. We set up camp and walked around the state park.  The good news is that what we had with us all worked great, but we came back with a list of things we need to add to our packs!!  Oh well, more tent camping is sure to come.  We’ll get it figured out before July!!!

 

In the morning we rode over to the Daytona International Speedway.

This is the home of NASCAR and the location of both the Daytona SuperCross and the Daytona 200 Motorcycle Road Race.  Although we originally planned to go to both of these, we have since decided that we’d see more on TV and be warmer! The last SuperCross I went to was in Salt Lake City and it snowed.  The way our weather luck is going on this trip I figured at a minimum we’d get rained on!!  Plus the roads in the area for both these events are going to be a zoo, clogged with bikers. We’d be on our DRZ’s and stuck in traffic; clutch hand aching and barely able to touch ground is not my idea of a good time.  So we took a track tour instead.  Wayne and I saw more of the track than we would have at any event.

 View of Lake Lloyd, in the track's infield from a luxury box

 31 Degree Banking, if  you aren't going at least 75MPH, gravity will pull you down

This place is huge. There are about 168,000 seats, plus standing room and infield parking giving it a capacity of over 200,000.

 The SuperCross track was in the process of being built

 The finish line (I know, but I had to take a picture!)

Information about previous winners.  We were the only ones who went straight to the motorcycle section

 Now that's a garage!!

After our tour we headed back to camp via the Ocala National Forest.  We checked out that campground, Big Scrub.  The roads are actually in good shape, we could get in there.  Oh well, Salt Springs is nice too.

Salt Springs is a natural spring rising from vertical fissures (cracks) in the earth. The presence of potassium, magnesium and sodium salts give the waters in the spring a slight salinity. Hence the name Salt Springs.

 

On Wednesday Wayne finally got a chance to snorkel in the clear water springs.  He had been looking for an opportunity to play in the water.  The weather wasn’t all that great, but the water is a constant 72 degrees and he had a wetsuit, so all was good.

 

I just had to take this picture, even though the flash woke them both up. This is Andy's favorite place to sleep at night, on either of us, he's not picky...

We woke to rain on Thursday, move day of course.  It poured so hard that at one point we just broke out the books and read for half an hour, waiting for it to end.  We didn’t have to be out of our current spot until 1 PM and our next stop, Mud Muckers, didn’t open until 3 PM, so we were in no hurry to get on the road...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 24-March 2, 2014 Arcadia Florida

First I have to say that if you read the previous two posts, you may have noticed they were a little different from my normal posts.  More photos, less words and information. This is because I was practicing doing my blog on my tablet.  It has its own set of challenges, but I need to master it as I won’t have a laptop on our coast to coast motorcycle trip in July.  If I can’t get it working better, then I may have to document the trip on Facebook on a daily basis and then do a huge blog post once we are home. I’ll keep working on it. ;-)  For now, back to this trip!!

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On Monday we moved southeast to Arcadia.  It was one of those days full of errands; shopping, a haircut and a stop at a post office.  We didn’t get to Little Willies RV Park until after 4 o’clock, although we only drove 143 miles. 

We got up early Tuesday and rode our motorcycles a few miles away to Canoe Outpost where we rented kayaks.  They took us by bus 8 miles upriver to the put-in at Brownville Park on the Peace River.

 The Peace River is another black water river, which was kind of scary.  After all, we are low in the water in kayaks and this river has alligators! And we couldn't see anything in the water!

 

Wayne took off first, but I soon passed him and headed downstream. It was a very pleasant way to spend the day.

 The critter count was 12 alligators and about 500 turtles, or so it seemed. We got quite close to a couple of big gators, at least until one entered the water and Wayne decided to paddle away, fast!

 About halfway back to the Outpost is a stretch of riverbank they own.  As renters of their kayaks we could stop and have lunch at one of their picnic tables

All too soon we were going under the train trestle just 10 minutes from the end of our day. I found I really like kayaking, I think I’d like to get one someday soon.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday working around the ‘house’, but on Friday we got the bikes back out and went for a short ride. 

 We went to Solomon’s Castle. This structure was built entirely by the hands of the artist, Howard Solomon, internationally known sculptor.  The exterior is made of the printing plates discarded by the local weekly newspaper. There are more than 80 interpretations of stained glass windows throughout Solomon's Castle.

 As all good castles it has a formal gate. Within the castle are the family's living quarters, a stained glass studio, a main entrance hall, and the extensive galleries, exhibiting Solomon's "found object" sculptures.

 

 

This is “The Fish That Got Away”

His art is made of used items.  This is out of coat hangers 

 

He has reproduced other artists works in wood. This was originally by Norman Rockwell.

 

This is Samsonite; he’s made of old luggage

This is a self-portrait of the artist.  He was actually there working and this does really look like him. 

More of the castle, the stained glass windows are the 9 planets 

Here is “The Fence” 

Howard also built a boat, because he had a moat to put it in 

On the way home we ended up having to turn around a couple of times, due to roads going into private property.  When we stopped here we found this armadillo.  He was pretty cute, rooting around with his snoot, looking for grubs and bugs.  Then he spent a minute furiously scratching his ears on a branch.  He had us laughing out loud. 

We were told that if you had a body of water bigger than a bath tub, you probably would have gators at some point.  This one and his buddy, who entered the water while I got my camera out, were sunning themselves on the edge of this very small pond next to the road.

On Saturday we rode 128 miles, going southwest to Port Charlotte, and then followed the Myakka River to Snook Haven Restaurant.

We had been told to go here, but we were under impressed.  The best thing about it was the charity event for Veterans that a local motorcycle club was putting on.  The worst was the service at the restaurant.  We waited half an hour for food that was barely warm and not all that great. 

It was a nice location along the river

We left Snook Haven and went to Venice Beach, or at least we tried.  Once again it worked out that we were going to the beach on a weekend, and so was everyone else.  Plus they closed the middle of town for a huge festival. So we took a right and headed to Myakka River State Park.  It is one of Florida's largest State Parks.

We went into the park and up to Myakka Lake, and then around the park. We had read that there were many miles of dirt roads, but they turned out to be non-motorized only.  So we went to the Canopy Walk to check that out.

 The walkway is suspended 25 feet above the ground and extends 100 feet through the hammock canopy. The term hammock is used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem.

 We had to climb to the top to see the view

 The second tower is 74’ in the air and has a spectacular view of treetops, wetlands and the prairie/hammock intersection.

The view looking down

We continued on our way back to Arcadia. We needed to get ready to move, Sunday would be move day.  We had stayed at Little Willies for 7 days, it was time to start north, to get closer to Daytona Beach and our ultimate excuse for this trip, Bike Week!!!