Trans America Trail... Part Two

After riding across Oklahoma which included a 31 mile stretch without a single turn, a miniature Sahara Desert and temps in excess of 107 degrees, we were finally in what is considered the western half of the TAT. The eastern half of the trail and the western half are both very popular for people just looking to do a section, but between the two is Oklahoma which is just a vast nothing with grass, and sometimes it doesn't even have grass. But I did manage to find pleasure in the fact that the Gators put a beating on the Sooners just six short months ago, and it made my day when I saw an OU sticker on someones car, which of course was promptly followed by a Gator Chomp!

Its always been amazing to me how the terrain changes so dramatically as soon as you cross state lines, guess it was planned that way.

If I had to pick a favorite section of the trail it would have to be Colorado, this place has everything as far as a dirt biker is concerned. And the scenery just gets better the farther you go from civilization.

At a fuel stop about half way across Colorado we ran into Brian, he was from New Hampshire and was riding the trail also. he was the first person we met who was actually riding the TAT. We knew there were other riders a couple of days ahead of us because we had found some strategically placed notes along the trail, with the date, times and ADV Rider screen names. Brian was riding a Honda XR 650R, I looked at this bike before I bought Roy but had decided against it because you can only go 90 miles on a tank of fuel, compared to 250 on a KLR. In this picture he is filling up the bags that hold wine when it comes in a box, that's what he was using to carry extra petrol. Brian was intent on letting everyone we met know that he was riding a Honda 650 "R "not an "L", R is for racing, and as he put it, "L stands for Lady". Being he was riding it solo we offered to let Brian ride with us for a while, something we would both soon regret.

This picture was taken as we started our ascent of Cinnamon Pass, the highest point on the TAT, almost 13 thousand feet!

Proof that we made it.

Cinnamon Pass being the highest point along the trail is also the last to shed its snow from the winter, because of this riding the TAT completely isn't possible until usually around mid July. As you can see we were right in time.

View from the top...

Dave was exceptionally happy when we finally made it back to a stretch of asphalt! This is the Million Dollar highway in Colorado, and also the last time we would see Dave for a couple of days. It was just about dark when we turned onto the Million Dollar highway trying to make it to Telluride, Brian and I got separated from Dave and ended up spending the night near Silverton, Dave went on over Ophir pass, in the dark!

The campsite where we spent the night. Beautiful place.

This is Ophir Pass, Dave went over this in the Dark, after already riding all day. But it actually worked out great being he couldn't see what was over the edge, he had dropped his bike about 4 times on Cinnamon Pass but made it over Ophir ( Which I found tougher than Cinnamon ) without a hitch! He had no idea how dangerous it actually was until I showed him some pictures! This picture doesn't do Ophir justice, this part was super steep, and very difficult, its a jeep trail and you have your choice of riding in one of two ruts. If you ride in the rut closes to the edge you risk going over it if you were to drop the bike, which would be game over. But if you ride in the opposite rut you are constantly dealing with big rocks because it catches everything that comes rolling down the mountain, it sucks no matter where you ride.

When we made it to Telluride we expected to find Dave, but he was nowhere to be found. So we just waited around Telluride for him to find us, being I have a Satellite tracker and he could find me. But we found out later that evening via email that he had decided to ride on to Moab and wait for us there. This picture was taken in front of what Telluride calls the "Free Box", its just some shelves where people drop off stuff they don't want, but I hear some really cool stuff passes through it. I was sitting at a hostel in Bogota, Colombia two days ago showing my pictures of the TAT to this guy from Colorado that I had met, when I got to this photo he said "hey that's the Free Box, I got this shirt from there!". Small world.

I left Telluride with Brian the next day, Dave was waiting on us in Moab, so we drove like we were competing in the Baja 1000 to make the 200 miles by a decent hour. All was going well until Brian decided to take the lead for the last 50 or so miles, when he came around me I noticed a pair of jeans come flying out of his bag, then a t-shirt. So I flagged him down to survey what was missing, a bunch of unimportant clothes and his whole map bag! He wasn't worried about the clothes but the map system is intricate and takes countless hours to prepare ( thanks Dave ) and he was not willing to go on without them. I was not happy to say the least. We had stopped for a break about 32 miles back and he had left his bag open at that time, now 32 miles doesn't sound like much but when it takes you all day to go 200 miles, you do the math, 32 miles can take hours, then you still have to drive back! So we decided that we would ride back until we found the maps and forget about whatever might have fallen out before that, that's when it actually became somewhat comical, because every mile or so we would find another piece of clothing, underwear here, a sock over there, I couldn't help but laugh. Just my luck the maps had fallen out about 100 yards from where we had stopped for the break, so we had backtracked over 31 miles! I arrived at the maps before Brian ( because he had to stop and pick up a pair of pants ) and I couldn't help but have some fun with him being that they were so important to him. I hid the maps in my jacket and told him someone must have stopped and picked them up along the roadside, but if I had found them he would have probably been happy enough to buy my beer that night, he obliged and I showed him the maps.

Just outside of Moab...

In Moab we met back up with Dave, at a hostel that reminded me of the bar from Star Wars, I've spent the night at tons of hostels throughout Central America but the Green Iguana in Moab takes the prize when it comes to strange people. We coined them with the term "lifers" because there are those who will pull themselves out of a pathetic life and those who never will, and these people were some of the latter. Also in Moab I was met by some long-time friends of the family, Bonita and Bill drive a Semi out west and just happened to be in Moab the one night that we were. They took us out for a great Mexican dinner that was well needed and much appreciated. It was funny because they were in Moab waiting for us to arrive that evening when they saw Dave ride by ( he was already there ), they didnt know Dave or had never seen his bike but knew he had to be the guy riding the TAT with me just by the way his bike looked. Which was looking pretty rough at this point.

This was one of the toughest hill climbs of the whole TAT, and I think Dave will agree. For some reason pictures just dont show how steep these hills are, but this one was steep, sandy and had a bunch a large rocks.

An open stretch of trail outside of Moab, this place looked like you were riding on the moon. Crazy!

I had planned on just writing one blog entry about the TAT and then just posting a link to Daves blog, but it hasn't worked out that way, just to much to write about.

More to come...