Day one. (Saturday)
Got up early, and out of the cabin by 6:15am.
Most excellent start, Helen and Barth generously met us at the cabin Friday night, and carted our asses across the state to Lake Havasu. All was going well, almost to Kingman and we had the right rear tire blow out on the truck. Helen did a fantastic job keeping everything under control!! Safely off the side of the road, the pit crew (mostly Barth) changed tires and off we went. Short stop over at the Discount tire, and good as new. But all this excitement gave us a late start.
We pulled out on the bikes into the nothingness ahead of us at about 4pm. At this point I was about to toss my lunch, the old nerves kicked in… what the heck do you think your doing… but I (reluctantly) turned on the GPS unit and off we went. The sick to the stomach feeling faded as we drove further, and the GPS unit was tracking perfectly to the course we plotted earlier… I mean dead on. Figuring this was a good sign, we looked backwards once, took some pictures and headed out.
Now we were really moving, our original goal was to be at lake Alamo by sunset. We really kept it moving to get there, GPS on track, Bikes, and travelers all perfect. Had to do a bit more shuffling of the gear to get things balanced and not wanting to go their own way.
Well, it became apparent there was no way we were going to make it to the lake, Still easily 20-30 miles short, and the last rays of sunshine were peaking up over the mountains. Camp was hastily pitched, by the light of ½ the bright moon. A few snacks, and were asleep fairly early.
detailed topomaps
End day one.
Day Two.
Nicely rested, breakfast cooked, eaten, and cleaned up, here we are getting ready to drop the tent, and hit the road.
We quickly realized our wise decision to stop when we did last night. Several steep hills were just ahead of us, and in the dark, could have been ugly.
Really nice area, hills, large washes, great landscapes… we trudged along to our goal of Alamo lake, approaching from the northwest. As we stopped to take in the lake from a distance, we were greeted by one of the locals. He wasn’t too happy with us…
It was a wet winter here in Arizona, very wet, lots of rain, so lots of roads and two tracks are quite washed out, and lake levels are quite high… Which brings us to our first issue.
You cannot get to the south side of Alamo lake (where the campground is) from the north side at this time. The lake level is so high, the road is under, oh, I don’t know, say 20 feet of water at least. We looked, and searched, but no easy way to get to the other side.
Decision time, give up on the lake, and lets head to the day two location, over by Crown King (south of Prescott). Fine, off we go… nice wide roads, sunny hot day. All is well.
Did I mention it was a wet winter… water is flowing in places it probably has not flowed in oh… 60 years. So up to signal road, cross Big Sandy river, cross, 93 and more trails to the Crown King area.
Not. Our first experience with the missing road syndrome. Shown on maps from 1981 to 2004, signal road crosses the Big sandy river, east of signal (by the way signal is marked as a town/city on maps.. Not. Anyway, road gone. All river, and a good 20 foot drop off to where you would have come up from the wash onto the road.
Backtracking, lots and lots of back tracking for the next few hours to find alternate route east. We are on non previously-GPS-plotted by us roads, hunting for and not finding a route across the river without heading back Yucca. After an encounter with some cattle, we did find a way across. Looked a bit deep at the beginning, so off with the jeans, grab a rope and start walking out.. not bad, about 8 inches deep as worst, but a long way across. One set of tire tracks coming out of the water (or going in) tells us its doable.
Ok, here we go.
No problem.
But by this time we are now very low on gas. About one fill up each left. (we have seen no stores, civilization, etc since Helen and Barth! And of course now we are fighting the sun light thing again… not enough gas or daylight to get anywhere near Crown King.
Decision made. Wikieup (yes a town) is now our goal. We both seem to remember gas, maybe a motel…. We get over to 93, and hit the pavement for 7 miles north.
Presto… Gas, Food, Lodging! Thank you lord!
Tied up our trusty steeds...
A special place needless to say, but we loved our accommodations, and the hot food served to us. Showers, flat somewhat usable mattresses and off to sleep.
Not.
Dreams of riding quads for 2 hours…reliving the days adventures and then some…Ah…finally asleep….NOT (again)… Helicopters, for gods sake, around midnight, circling and circling… ok, so how long could that go on… considerably longer that I ever thought… eventually we think landed at the Mobil station down the street. Never heard it leave, there were flashing lights down there, but too tired and not dress for investigating. Trucks lots of trucks travel 93 also,,, 7x24 I might add. … sleep finally…
detailed topo maps
Day 3
Up and moving, breakfast cooked and served to us, more ice, water, (no beer, really neither of us have had more than… what 4 beers total…) just too tired to drink at end of day. Anyway, bikes reloaded,
gassed and good, off we go, back down that 7 miles of pavement to the other side of Signal road, which heads east toward Bagdad, but we were going to cut south, and come up in the south west side of Prescott.
25 miles down to where the turn off would be, Not. Did I mention its been a wet winter here in Arizona. The area where the road is to be.. and I am talking a big red line on lots of Arizona maps, not a little 4x4 road… no road. Looks like a atom bomb went off in this area, major flooding had taken place. No trace of where the road would have ever been.
No worries mate, keep going straight. It raps around into Bagdad, a little out of the way, but heck, no biggie…
Not. Another 10 miles out, gate, huge copper mine here, and they have closed the road, very hilly, no way around, and nasty stuff on the signs like federal law prohibits, yadda yadda yadda… Grumble bitch moan, only about 5 miles out of bagdad, cant get there from here.
Several other side routes that were marked as 4x4 and trails, were also missing and could not be found due to the flooding that had taken place during the wet Arizona winter.
All the way back to 93 (huge back track), fine, we’ll go down to 97 and go in that way.
Lots of travel on the highway is not a happy thing for me on a quad, but it’s a great road, with really large paved shoulders.
The Oil plug/stick popped out of the 2x4 Andy is riding, oil everywhere. Lucky dogs we are, saved the oil stick, added oil and off we went.
We got down to Nothing, AZ (swear to god). Trusty O’l gps says… shortcut east, comes out where you guys were heading in the first place.
What a great little shortcut! No really, was the best riding all day. And it did come out exactly on the road we wanted to be on about 6 hours earlier. Much goodness.
(and not one picture taken there... duh,....)
Ok, now again, we are fighting daylight issues, just a few hours till dark now, and we really at this point had our harts set on a motel room, that means Prescott or bust.
Bust. That pesky oil stick popped out again,,, (now let me tell you it was screwed in tight, real tight. But once again, oil all over andy, bike, and smoke everywhere… not as lucky with the o’l dip stick this time, plug (cap) still good, but dip stick broken, fine. I can check it with the one from my bike. More oil, and gone again.
But it just did not seem to be running just quite right, we switched bikes, If it was gonna blow, It’d be my doing… dark,, dark coming quickly,,, 27 up hill paved miles left. Easy driving, but we are sharing the road with cars and trucks now…. We have a system, we see someone coming from behind us, we get out of the way, let them pass, and off we go again… over and over and over.. but we made it!! Just getting dark, at this altitude its now dark and cold.
Well, they left the light on for us…. It’s a rather nice Motel 6, and we are happy to be in it. It has a phone, and TV, 2 somewhat comfy beds, and an awesome shower. The Streets of New York brought us a tasty pizza, and we are again in quad heaven….
Well that wraps up the adventures to the minute. We will do some bike research in the morning, and see if we can continue, or need to throw in the mechanical towel .
Miles to date: 253
detailed topo maps
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UPDATES HERE
Day 4
Prescott to Camp Verdy
Up mostly early, started making calls to Quad shops to determine if we can get the bike looked at. Got a hold of a place in Prescott Valley, Star Island Motorsports, Talked to Scott, very nice man, asked if that bike has an O ring on the plug/stick. Hmmmm,, don’t remember seeing one, but he had no real idea what the problem may be, but would be willing to take a look.. I told him we would poke around see what we see, and give him a call back.
By the time we got done packing and looking, we were ready to go, and Prescott valley was not that far out of the way, so we figured we go see Scott.
What a great place. These guys really set us up! Hooked us up with an O ring (which is something that is supposed to be there (other bike had one). Washed up the bikes, got us some extra oil, and 2 spark plugs just in case. What a great group of guys, they were jealous of our ride. Told us about a short cut back to our planned route, pointed us to the closest gas pumps and sent us on our way.
If you ever find your self in Prescott Valley and need some Quad work done, see our friends at Star Island Motorsports!!
Gassed up, lunch, and on the road. Nice day, but windy,, ,very very windy…. Took some great 4x4 roads from Prescott valley to Camp Verde area, nice run, tough, but nice
saw lots of these... but not where they needed to be....
Just coming to 260 above Camp Verde, sat and watched about 4 cops go by, we waited, cause we needed to do 260 into town… we had decided to make It a short day, get a place to stay and enjoy the evening in town..
2 more cops passed us coming into town, no problem, could not have cared less about us. Got a nice room at the Territorial Inn. Hung out at the room (very nice by the way!),
Did some pre-trip map review….
Had some burgers and beers in town, …realized we had locked ourselves out of our room, at about 11pm, woke up all the neighbors in our hotel trying to get in… see they don’t always have someone on duty at the hotel… so at night when you would need someone… poof… alone…. Called the Marshal to get someone to bring us keys, continued to piss off our motel neighbors while sitting outside talking. Ok in room, pass out… (andy stayed awake, and plotted the next days roads on the GPS!! Good man…)
detailed topo maps
Day 5
All the neighbors watched us closely as we prepped to leave… would not talk to us,, nor we them, but they kept an eye on us….
Easy day planned, mostly larger map roads, should be able to make Heber by the end of the day…. Or so we thought…..
Started out great… nice area, good roads…
More nice roads...
Then it got ugly…. Man’o man, did it get rocky and rough,,, really axel crackin stuff, very slow going, we figured and hour or so to get across to Forest road 3, well hell it took better part of 5 hours to get to an area where the roads were good again, and here we found our first real beloved ponderosa pines. Nice forest area, wonderful traveling.
Got to forest road 3, paved, but not heavily traveled, stopped to gas up, and ran into Ranger Dave… what can I say about Ranger dave…. Nope, not what your thinking… really nice guy, we told him our story, and goal, and that we were heading down to the 300 road…. Just shook his head… no,,, don’t think so… its all snow covered, trees down, just ugly,, doubt you can get through that way…. Dragged out his map (nice map) and told us a better way to go, and to also stop at the blue ridge ranger station and verify if we could or could not get to the 300 road from there.
Not an encouraging stop. Lots of head shaking, and questions about just how high of water did we want to cross. 6 inches is my thought, said,, oh, a foot, he said,, how about two… Well, looking at no choices,, we got some directions of where to cross the river (stream) and off we when. Its starting to get sorta late,, and making Heber is getting questionable, but I wanted to try and make the 300 road,, easy from there…. NOT.
The road that would get us to the 300. (marked as closed ahead, several times), was in good shape, almost there.
Started seeing some snow, but nothing bad,,, if we can just get to the 300, they have been out there clearing trees, and such, we should be able to get down there, and it would not be long to a clear road again.
Well, about 1.5 miles from the 300, we got stuck, I high centered the quad,,, did not even consider all the extra weight on the damn things.
Another hour digging, and towing out the quads, we are 1 mile from the 300, and unable to go any further. Cold, wet, and nun too happy, we decided to turn around, find that cutoff / deep water crossing, found that, got to river, but did not see a crossing, looking around, we saw that we were at a deceit place to camp, we had enough time to get set up prior to it getting dark, got a fire started, yea,,… cold and wet remember…
Nice dinty moore stew, and, heated up some large sand stones, placed them in our sleeping bags (those things stayed warm all night…. Really nice), anyway, off to bed.
detailed topo maps
Day 6
The water jugs froze.
Ice on tent.
Broke the frozen water, made some coffee, plotted another route home, that does not use the 300 road, and went looking for that river crossing.
Piece of cake.
Nice shallow crossing, up a large hill, and traveling through very nice wooded area.
We got our selves to the 504 road, (way west and north of town), but I know its good road, without snow. 25 miles to go..
Had lots of elk on this part of trip, but only this one was interested in waiting for me to dig out the camera.
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Beat feet to heber, and headed to the cabin, just in time, the girls were about 20 minutes from calling out search and rescue… (no phone service since camp verde). So, made some calls, let everyone know we were ok, and now here we are, down at Mark and Kathy’s having a lovely dinner, waiting for me to finish this story.
Good trip, glad to be home, sun burnt and tired.
detailed topo maps
About our trip.
Total miles = 468
Polaris makes a great quad.
Meridian make a great GPS unit.
My Dell laptop worked great.
- point here, this trip could not have been completed without the gps, the topo software and the laptop to plot our course.
12 gallons of gas is about 6 short. (more is better, just in case)
Dusty, very dusty!!!
Made the trip in tennis shoes, (forgot my boots), and my shoes look quite good still.
Real lack of wild life seen. (2 or 4 legged)
QB, and Andy.
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phone in updates and Kathie updates from previous days here
Day 5- Wed 4/20 - Call in update 9:30 am.....Boy's & bike's are fine & having breakfast in Camp Verde. Oil problem taken care of.
Hoping to make Heber/Overgaard by late this afternoon
Day 6 - 8:15 am.....Quad 54 where are you??????? Boy's didn't make Heber/Overgaard yesterday...hoping to hear from them soon!