Trans America Trail... Part Three

Utah brought on some great riding, and beautiful scenery, its a very unique State to say the least. Its known as having some of the best dirt bike riding in the nation, and it didn't disappoint.

We came across this old abandon mine shaft, after plundering around inside we found a sign saying "NOTICE: Mine shafts may contain radon, radioactive material or abandoned explosives. DO NOT ENTER". Now you tell us...

This is a great example of what Utah had to offer, this is Black Dragon Canyon, and probably my favorite stretch of the whole TAT. I had been to Zion National Park just a month before and this place looked just like a miniature version. And we rode through the whole canyon and never seen another person, try that in Zion.

Luckily the trail wasn't this nice through the whole canyon, it quickly turned into pretty much just a single track dirt bike trail that followed a dried up creek bed. It was tough and very technical but offered the best riding of the whole trail, in my opinion. Would love to have this kind of riding in Florida.




A little more technical part of the Trail, and it got a lot worse!


This was a pretty tough section, but fun to ride, it always helps when you have the kind of view that Utah offers.

This is the morning and picture that almost pushed Dave over the edge. After riding with Brian for 3 or 4 days Dave had all he could stand, he was done. Brian had been working on his bike just as you see him, in speedos and medical gloves, but that wasn't enough, after he finished working on his bike he decided to take it for a test ride around the campground, dressed just as you see him here. Dave about flipped out. Turns out this would be the last day we rode with him anyway. I actually enjoyed having Brian around, most of the time. Mainly because his riding style was like mine and the fact that he loved when the trail got tough or fast, just like myself. Dave being the older and least skilled rider tended to ride a little slower and more conservative, he rode keeping in mind that it was a long trail and you could have a trip ending crash or injury at any moment. Brian and Myself on the other hand tended to ride in the moment, living for every hill we could jump, corner we could slide around or anytime you were riding with the front wheel off the ground. But anytime you ride like that, especially for day in and day out you take many chances and eventually one of those chances catches up to you.

This moment is exactly what I was talking about, the chances I was taking came back to bite me. We had just turned onto the trail in Nevada, it was just a long straight road heading right out into the desert, I was feeling good and hit the throttle while trying to look down at my roll chart and reset my odometer at the same time. When I looked up I saw a berm about 20 feet in front of me, now for some reason there is all kinds of small berms across the road in the desert but this particular one not only caught me off guard but it also had a ditch just on the other side of it. Usually you can just stand up on the pegs pull back on the bars while hitting the gas and just glide right over pretty much anything, but as my rear tire launched off the berm my front tire was down in the ditch which sent me heading across the desert just riding on the front tire, not a good thing when your going 40mph. I thought for a while that I was going to save it, and I did manage for a bit but once I ran off the road and into the scrub brush it was all over, I wiped out! Bigtime!

I was fine, I rolled about 3 times then landed back on my feet, Roy on the other hand didn't come out of it so well, you can see if the picture he is pretty banged up. But we picked up all the pieces, got my gear strapped back down and Roy fired right up! Only major damage was a broke windshield and some bent handle bars, which took my a couple days to just adjusted to riding with. Dave got to relish in a big fat "I told you so" being he had been warning me the whole trip, but I was having a blast!

I pretty much led the group for about 90% of the trail, mainly because it just worked better that way, I like to ride faster than Dave does so it just worked better for me to be out front and riding at my own pace. But when your leading you are exposed to a lot more danger, and on to many occasions to count when something almost took me I out would make some kind of hand motion to warn whoever was coming behind me, or just stop and take out my camera and film Dave taking a spill. When you ride for hours on end off road you just kind of get into this zone, crank up Bon Jovi on the Ipod and its just you, the bike and whatever may come around the next corner, nothing else matters and its a great feeling. Every mile you travel makes you more confident with your riding ability, the feeling that you get when power sliding around some corner and just for a split second you are completely out of control is very addictive, its an instant rush of adrenaline, your mind is completely focused and then when you regain control your completely stoked! But no one can keep that up for 4700 miles without a major crash. Its just sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and live in the moment. And riding the TAT is one of those times.

This turned out to be the worse day of the whole trip, but arguably the best. After picking up pieces of my bike spread out over about 25 yards of desert we ran into some mud that was just horrendous! But somewhere amongst all the bad things we managed to loose Brian! He got separated from us and we haven't seen him since. So at least some good came out of this! I had finally got my fill of him the night before when he decided to change his clothes while standing on the picnic table in our campsite! And I mean all of his clothes! But I do hope he finished the trail.

This mud got caked around my rear wheel so bad that when I let out on the clutch it would just stall my engine, I would have to keep digging it out of the swing arm. Plus it was as slick as ice so there was no way to control where you were heading, you just went wherever the bike went. Must have taken an hour to go one mile!


After we finally managed our way through the mud we hit miles upon miles of sand, in my opinion Nevada was be far the hardest section of the trail. But it depends a lot on the weather, if its really rainy I hear that Oklahoma can be worse.

After 20 days on the TAT we finally made it to Oregon, and I think we both got a well needed moral boost after riding across Nevada. This is just one of what seemed like hundreds of crystal clear streams that we would cross.

Being the TAT goes within 10 or so miles of Crater Lake we decided to stop in and camp for the night. What an amazing place! We met a guy name Al who was just out on a long weekend ride, he was on a 650 BMW and we took a 32 mile ride around the perimeter of Crater Lake right at sunset. It was beautiful but the mosquitoes were out in full force and I about froze my butt off on the way back.

Crater Lake at sunset....

Well as you can tell from this picture we made it! 5,300 or so miles of which probably 4,200 or so would be considered off-road. It took us 22 days of riding to complete, we took one day off in Telluride ( by one day off I mean we only rode for 3 hours ) while looking for Dave, I put 160 hours of actual engine run time on my bike. So that works out to riding a dirt bike 8 hours a day for three weeks straight! That's hardcore! I think the TAT was tougher than me or Dave had expected, but that's exactly what you want, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. When we got to the Pacific we stayed the night in a hotel and celebrated with some beer. The next morning Dave headed south to head home ( which turned into a whole different adventure, check out his blog ), and I headed north to Portland where I had left the VW Bus exactly a month before.
The main question I get asked is "Would you do it again?", absolutely! Not only would I do it again, I plan on doing it again, would love do it in a jeep or some other kind of off road capable vehicle, which could probably make about 90% or so of the trail. If not in a jeep it will be on an actual dirt bike, something that you don't have to carry all your own gear, and having a motorhome as a support vehicle would be ideal. Its crazy to think that in 2009 you can still drive across the country using pretty much only dirt roads, but its possible! I don't think people realize how large the United States actually is, when I hear people talk about over population... I just laugh.