The next big thing a Continental Divide dual sport ride

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Sunny skies made for a fast dry-out of camp on away we go.

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We have cactus, getting south for sure now.

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This thing looks like it would enjoy stinging you deeply and often. Evil little beastie.

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Balancing rocks and a whitewash landscape are a stark contrast from the forests of prior days.

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Miles and miles of cobbled rock mixed with some fun fast dirt stretches leads us to a canyon few people get to enjoy unless you bash some brush.

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Note the grasshopper in the foreground.
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Met these guys after a quick romp up a loose rock strewn hill, they were looking for the easiest way down. The guy on the right was walking with a limp while sporting some blood and a band-aid on his nose from a recent off.

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The way down wasn’t easy but it sure was fun with plenty to see.

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This is not an exaggeration, had there been rain in forecast we would have worked around it.

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There was lots of evidence of recent rains.

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And more apparent evidence of not so recent rains.

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You should see me trying to chase down bugs with my camera in macro mode to get a focused shot. These usually take the most time since flowers and vista don’t scurry around trying to get away.

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Part of our diversion from the scheduled route was the the big lava tubes in El Malpais National Monument where we camp and explored that night. We had picked up a couple gigantic Fosters and proceeded to take the extended walking tour of razor sharp lava beds in our slipper shoes for Don and Croc sandals for me.

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Yes, that is a lava tube bridge Don is on.

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These cave openings are about 30-40 feet high.

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This one was extra big, that is a sign down there for the cavers to read.

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The plotted route back out was in the Garmin maps but probably disappeared somewhere between now and 1964.

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I’m not saying we went through there but if we had we would have had to lift our bikes over this gate to keep out motorized vehicles. Good thing we didn’t go through there because those suckers are heavy!

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Once back on track and on Pie Town Rd we met up with the owner of The Gathering Place who invited us to BBQ and Pie at his place. The Pie-O-Neer was closed so the decision was made for us. Good thing too, the BBQ was delicious and we split a slice of warmed up berry pie. Don signed us in on the limited space available.

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Uber, this is great! Some guys read this and say "cool but not for me" and others read this and say "can I have your route map and GPS tracks?"

I'm the latter. I think this would be an epic trip and exciting to see it in this post.

One question - you and others all seem to be on mid size 650's and such. What about a slightly larger KTM 1190 R? It sports the 21" front tire and could be easily outfitted with some giant loop or mosko moto style bags instead of the alumunium panniers to lighten weight. I'm no motocross rider but I can ride single track on smaller bikes no worries, so I wonder how this trip would be on the larger bike.

 
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Uber, this is great! Some guys read this and say "cool but not for me" and others read this and say "can I have your route map and GPS tracks?"
I'm the latter. I think this would be an epic trip and exciting to see it in this post.

One question - you and others all seem to be on mid size 650's and such. What about a slightly larger KTM 1190 R? It sports the 21" front tire and could be easily outfitted with some giant loop or mosko moto style bags instead of the alumunium panniers to lighten weight. I'm no motocross rider but I can ride single track on smaller bikes no worries, so I wonder how this trip would be on the larger bike.
You could do this ride, other than the hard splits, on any big adv bike if you have confident skills. Most of the time I found myself looking for a difficult line just to make it interesting. Wet and muddy conditions would be a game changer though, picking up a big bike often would have you considering the gas and match technique of vehicle recovery.
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While this was a fabulous ride I would not do it again and will explain further at the closing of this ride report.

 
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Great ride report, Uberkul! You've got me wistfully staring at my 950 Adv and thinking I just might be able to do this.

 
The Very Large Array wasn’t on too many CDT riders radar but was close enough that I added it to our trajectory (Radio joke, get it). Neither of us felt strongly enough about going into the tourist center to spend $8.00 so away we rode after snapping some cool shots.
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Meagen is a gal in our office and it was her birthday so when you are are riding through the desert and spot a Happy Birthday balloon drifting in the sage brush you don’t let the opportunity slip by. Posted this to her Facebook page when I had cell service the next day.

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It was at this point the regularly scheduled riding got a little sketchy. The route had us bumping into ranch gates, old forest roads that looked like they hadn’t been used in years, road markers laying on the ground, riverbed roads and finally a pissy ranch couple who turned us around only a quarter mile from the main road. That one put a burr in Don’s blanket that took hours to work through. The whole fiasco cost us about three hours and had us riding into the night to set up camp after dark.

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Pretty good campsite considering we had no idea what it looked like until the next morning.

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The Santa Rita Copper Mine, I’m pretty sure you can see this sucker from space!

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We checked into a decent motel that night so we could purchase one day of Mexican auto insurance online. The last day of riding the actual divide route started with us donating our bear spray to a local bike shop because no pepper spray is allowed when crossing the border. The owner would pass them along to some CDT bicyclists running from south to north.

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A slight miscalculation routing led us to a very nice lady rancher who pointed us back into the right direction. In doing so we ran across this dude who patiently waited us out before relocating him off the road.

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This little guy got all uppity when Don started poking at him. I'm not much into spiders but big furry ones are kinda cool.

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Flowers growing out of a cattle guard, how can you not stop for a photo of that?

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Locust? These critters were all over the road and big enough to see and avoid, most of the time. Glad there weren't flying because it would have left bruises!

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The underpass on Hwy 10 is kind of a big landmark on this ride. From here south there is nothing but the town of Hachita until the border. Hachita was a town at one time but not anymore, no service of any kind. Some quick roadside math said we had to run into Lordsburg on Hwy 10 before continuing on into Mexico.

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Just on the other side of the underpass is a tourist trap where Don had hoped to score a continental divide ride t-shirt. No joy for him or this guy.

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I don’t even remember a hump in the road near this divide marker.

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I was a little nervous for the border crossing at Antelope Wells. I rolled up to the US side and proceeded to roll through since no one was there? Don comes on the communicator just as I hear whistles telling me to turn around. I was going out the in door to the country and they don’t like when that happens. The border agents joked seriously about prison if I’d continued on.

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Talk about night and day at the border! U.S. side, pavement, modern construction and professional. Mexico, old wooden buildings, some dude in civies, dirt road and chickens. The Mexican border jefe just gave us a bored wave after telling him our destination. We kinda figured out where we where supposed to go through the road construction in progress and headed for Mexico Hwy 2. Rob’s borrowed GPS did not have Mexico maps loaded so when the magic purple line veered off onto a closed road as soon as we crossed the border I knew we’d be improvising.

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We crossed over from Chihuahua to Sonora where we would leave Mexico at Agua Prieta into Douglas, AZ. We had a super nice ride over a mountain pass and quickly learned if the guy in front of you signals left it’s clear to pass, no matter the type of line down the middle of the road. Miles of construction detours onto parallel dirt roads made it even better passing trucks and cars over the whooped out bypasses.

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The Mexican military had a checkpoint set up about a mile out from Agua Prieta and while a little nerve wracking with the number of guys, guns and gates it was another bored wave-off from three guys this time leaning against a barrier after hearing our route.

The crossing back into the states was lines of cars lined up three to four deep and hot. The agent thought the ride we’d been on sounded cool but I wasn’t real chatty after chosing the wrong line, getting hot and bothered as Don motors on two lanes over. In Douglas we gassed up, pounded a big Gatorade and hit the road to move some air. We saw quite a few US Border Patrol on our way to Tombstone and turned off just before a fixed checkpoint probably 20 miles inside the border. As we rolled into Tombstone the sky grew dark and we geared up for rain for the last few miles of our wonderful trip.

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It poured as we entered town but felt pretty darn good with the heat.

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Every time I turned on Rob’s GPS I was greeted with a photo of his family from years ago. “Hello Rob’s family” was the greeting each morning so whether he knows it or not he, and his family, finished the ride with us.

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We had to get up to Phoenix today to meet Don’s brother Tom for our shuttle ride home. We knew it was going to be brutally hot and tried to get an early start only to discover I had a front flat turning out of the motel. Broke it down next to a convenience store under the shade of a small tree and never found a hole in the tube? Put it all back together with a new valve core and motored on after sweating out about a quart of liquids. We did stop long enough to buy Don a set of garden gloves since he lost one earlier the prior day. Just prior to that stop I got stung by something big under my left arm but I’m pretty sure I ended it’s miserable life with a few frantic whacks.

We did stop early in the day to do a little cactus photo shoot but once that was done it was all business getting to Buckeye just west of Phoenix.

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Look up hot in the dictionary and you see a picture of this.

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Even as hot as it was I still had to get some shots of these sculptures for my eldest daughter Ashley. She’s a biologist but has had a thing for T-Rex since she was a little girl.

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So we rolled into our final riding destination of the trip with the ambient temperature at 105 F/40.5 C. Our hero Tom had cranked the AC in the rooms to max and had a few ice cold beers ready for consumption! Somehow I scored the private room that night and man did I enjoy sleeping without ear plugs that night. The next morning we got a very early start for the long run home driving in shifts. I rolled into my driveway about 8:30 that evening after over 15 hours on the road but very happy to be home.

I'll post up some afterthoughts from the ride including if I did it again what would be different and gear choices. If you have made it this far thanks for reading and letting me share our little adventure.

Our next scheduled big ride will be the circumnavigation of Baja in 2018 with as little pavement as possible.
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Great RR, Uber! But failing to see the reason not go on this trip - did I miss something?

 
Boy that was an excellent read!!!! Your photography skills are excellent. I'm sorry about Rob's accident.

I have that same Kelty Tarp and it is a life saver!!! A must bring for any moto camper.

I've often dreamed about buying a dual sport and getting off the beaten path. But even my wildest dreams couldn't imagine that.

Most excellent adventure. Well done, indeed....

 
Totally agree about the adventure part. Pictures are great, but the narrative is just as important. I love the way you meshed the two of them. I so want to get an off road bike and ride it on a trail like that. But given that I have never even rode a dirtbike/dual purpose bike, I am pretty sure I would wind up like Rob on the first day. Maybe in the first hour or minute, but who is counting. It looks like so much adventure, camping, and exploring. Just my cup of whiskey!

 

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