Searching For New Stuff In The Same Old Desert

[WoodsChick]

As we've done for the last 5 years or so, we spent the Memorial Day week in northwestern Nevada. I was feeling a bit restless, wanting to explore new ground, but we found ourselves in the same old spot anyway. The allure of the desert is too great, and even though there's tons of desert to choose from, it's really hard to give up the little slice of heaven we've found.

It was a bit of a rough trip out there. Normally we'd leave town early on Wednesday but I've been racing sailboats on Wednesday nights, the Sweet Sixteen series out of the Oakland Yacht Club, and didn't want to miss a race. We've been doing really well and this night was no exception, as we brought the Jackal home in first, but it was a long race and I didn't get home til late...

We finally left town at 9:30pm. Apparently somewhere outside of Fernley we pulled over for a nap. Eric gassed up, slept for 2 hours, and then took off without waking me up. I didn't wake up til Eric started urgently asking me to look out the back window of the van and tell him if I see sparks. Yep, I see sparks. What the hell...? Ah, damn it...

The tire had disintegrated, showering my shiny Husqvarna TR650 Terra in shredded melty rubber, and we were rockin' down the runway on metal. We installed the spare and headed to Winnemucca for the night. FYI, WalMart in Winnemucca has trailer tires on wheels if you should ever need one while in the area.


Happy to get to our favorite campsite at 9am, and nice to find these lovely items waiting for me. Lucky in love, I am...

Any reservations I had about coming back to the same old place were quickly replaced with thoughts of gratitude, reverence and true awe...

Spent the afternoon loading the bikes with camping gear and perusing the maps. Spent the evening stargazing and soaking away the aches and pains of the workweek...

Jupiter and Mercury at sunset...

Our morning was full of promise and moist ground...

If you want to find water in the desert all you need to do is follow the animals...

North into Oregon...

There's water everywhere in the desert, it just takes a little bit of looking around to find it...

Map check in perfect solitude...

We're in the right place...Oregon Central Military Wagon Road, 1864...

Heading north...

Hey! Something new!

This place was a trip...a fortress in the middle of nowhere. Seriously...nothing for miles and miles and miles...and this place is built to withstand a serious assault. Party palace on the top...

Windows covered in 1" thick trench plate...

More to come!
Lots more...




WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

What is this place protecting? The road we came in on can be seen in the background...

Empress of all I survey...

Seeing the pronghorn antelope let us know we were getting close to our destination for the evening...

And our destination was a quiet little corner of an antelope refuge...

After setting up camp we took a walk and a soak...

We returned to camp and noticed an old guy had pulled in sort of close to us. He kept taking his CT90 out for short rides and then returning. We were slightly dismayed to see someone else there, but it was just a guy out enjoying the desert by himself on his bike...pretty much what we were doing...so it was cool. We cooked dinner and settled in for a nice evening...

Within an hour we knew what the guy on the CT90 was doing on his little rides. He was looking for the three 15-passenger vans that were going to be joining him. We watched in horror as Southern Oregon University students, cases of Keystone beer, and camping equipment came spilling out of the 3 vans. And join him they did...right behind our orange tent.

Seriously...there were 6 tents mere steps from our own...here, in this vast and remote desert...

They drank and yelled and carried on all f'ing night. The next morning we counted 15 tents, including the 6 tucked into the trees right next to our own, and a Bronco that slept 3. We've spent a week out here before and not seen 15 people all week! Ugh... Well, I guess this counts as something new in the same old desert, eh?


We were up and out of our tent long before sun-up, though. It was still and quiet and cold...21º. We watched the full moon set as the sky got light...

We greeted the sun and watched the deer and the antelope play...

We fished the Keystone beer cans (grrrr....!) out of the water...

...and I angrily tossed them into the still-slumbering tent village from hell as we passed by on our way back to camp...

Had a tasty breakfast of chicken mole' and tortillas...

...and then packed up camp and prepared to leave. We decided it would be a good idea to warm up the boisterous Leo Vince'd Huskys for a good long while. You know, on account of it being so cold and all. Man, those Huskys are LOUD early in the morning when everyone is sleeping off a late night. Gee, I felt really bad about that. No, really...

 

[d EVOlved 1]

Looking forward to the rest....
opcornopcorn

 

[two wheel tramp]

WoodsChick that road in to Oregon... It looks like heaven on earth.

 

[WoodsChick]

WoodsChick that road in to Oregon... It looks like heaven on earth.

That whole area is heaven on earth, pretty much




WoodsChick

 

[Butch]

YachtChick?

 

[WoodsChick]

We took our properly warmed-up Huskys and railed out towards the south in search of something we'd never seen before...

Green is always a lovely color in the desert...

And green in the desert usually means one thing, right?

It always pays to check it out, especially if it's not on the map...

Not exactly what I was looking for...

Hey, hey! Looks like this runs through here, too...

We headed up it a ways just to see the view...

While up there we found the track we were looking for. There it is, down on the right...

And it was a fantastic track...

Nice rocks...

They were even nicer up close...

Leaving the rocks behind...

I'd heard tell of a semi-abandoned glass house out here somewhere. Had even seen photos of it. Had no idea where it was, other than in this valley somewhere, and that it wasn't visible from the track I was on. We rode around in the heat for quite some time, opening and closing gates, traversing wet muddy non-roads in tall grasses, going through abandoned ranches...all the while thinking that a house...and a glass one, at that...should be pretty obvious out here in the land of no houses. It wasn't. We found it anyway, and it was up on a hill hidden from those down below...

Very artsy and cool...

Comes with a dance floor deck...

I was pretty damned happy to find this place...

The end of the driveway could use some landscaping...

The views were OK, I guess...

WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

YachtChick?

Not exactly...


TryingnottofallofftheboatordosomethingstupidChick

 

[SFMCjohn]

North into Oregon...

Hi WC,

Wonderful! :ride

Looking forward to the rest of the trip ...
Thanks for posting ... You guys rock! :thumbup

see you around the campfire,
-- SFMCjohn

 

[WoodsChick]

Hi WC,

Wonderful! :ride

Looking forward to the rest of the trip ...
Thanks for posting ... You guys rock! :thumbup

see you around the campfire,
-- SFMCjohn

Thanks, John! :ride
I'll get to more later on this afternoon.




WoodsChick

 

[two wheel tramp]

That whole area is heaven on earth, pretty much




WoodsChick

I need to go there! The contrast of blue, green and earth colors is amazing.

I remember how sweet the desert smelled. :love

I look forward to more of this report.

 

[Nemo Brinker]

Yeah--makes me get a sense-memory of the smell of freshly-rained-upon sagebrush. Ahhhh. Too bad about the jackass campers, but glad you could make their lives a little harder in the early morn!

 

[WoodsChick]

Yeah--makes me get a sense-memory of the smell of freshly-rained-upon sagebrush. Ahhhh. Too bad about the jackass campers, but glad you could make their lives a little harder in the early morn!

I am usually very conscientious about making noise in the morning when camping. I will push my bike out to the road or to the other side of a big pile of rocks or whatever...anything to lessen the chances of making a potentially negative impression on those around me. On this particular morning I just didn't give a shit, you know? I gave the unruly hordes plenty of opportunity to realize they weren't the only ones there. I asked nicely for them to please keep it down. An hour later I asked a little louder. No luck. They were the only other people around and they got every ear-splitting decibel they deserved. :mad




WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

We left the glass house heading south out of the valley on our way to the Military Wagon Road. Lots of natural springs in this valley...

Always smart to build your house next to a springs...

This little guy surprised me in the tall wet grass under the trees...

We looked for a shortcut back to the military road, and this looked like it would do nicely...

Singletrack, much like love, is where you find it...

This track looked like it would take us where we wanted to go, and it would be interesting even if it didn't...

We found an entrance to the military road and headed up into the hills, taking one last look at the incredibly beautiful valley we were leaving behind...

The road was much more primitive than we expected, which was a nice change from the high-speed track we'd just gotten off of in the valley. The rocky road took us up and over the ridge and deposited us here...lucky us!

Eric found a BLM marker in the grass...

Huh...that's odd. Our map says Mud Lake. They must've changed the name of the lake sometime in the last 52 years. I mean, that's the only plausible explanation...right?

We parked the bikes and took a quick dip...

These little lovelies were everywhere...

Up and over yet another ridge...

This stuff never gets old...

Eric's always said I live with my head in the clouds...

No caption needed...

Antelope everywhere...

 

[KWeezyXB12]

can you take a vehicle through there? like a 4x?

 

[Cafe Racer]

OMG....!

Your reports are always interesting, informative and inspiring. But this one really works for me. :thumbup

I'm planning my escape in November and you have opened my mind to something different.

Cheers!

Miguel

 

[WoodsChick]

can you take a vehicle through there? like a 4x?

Yeah, most of it was just roads like you see in the photos. We did do a little bit of cross-countrying on the bikes when we were looking for the glass house that probably wouldn't have been too cool in a 4-wheeled vehicle, but this whole little delicious corner of Nevada and Oregon is pretty much the promised land for folks that want to get away from it all and explore some beautiful country.

OMG....!

Your reports are always interesting, informative and inspiring. But this one really works for me. :thumbup

I'm planning my escape in November and you have opened my mind to something different.

Cheers!

Miguel

Thanks, Miguel! That is awesome!! Totally super-cool to know I've inspired someone to enjoy the same things I enjoy :applause
Go do it!



HonoredChick



WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

So after pretty much picking our way over the ridge and doing some fairly intense route-finding, we dropped down through a pretty rocky track only to find this gem waiting for us on the other side...

It looked kind of muddy, but it was lovely! We cruised to the south end of the lake...

I was all proud of my fence-tying job...obviously :laughing

We didn't see a sign, but we looked around for the ever-present BLM marker and guess what?

Hah! Yep, we were at Mud Lake. Man, we were way off! That doesn't happen very often, fortunately. A little further down the road we saw the sign...

There was no water in Horsehead Lake...

We tried to follow this track over the rock-strewn ridge but it was quickly disappearing...

Where we had just come from. Can you see our tracks? I can't either...

Map check complete, it was time to pull out the GPS...a very rare occurrence.. to check coordinates...

Yep, just as we suspected, we were right on track. Don't ask why my bike is parked perpendicular to the road at the bottom...

(Note to self: get beefier foot peg mount bolts and a new mirror...)




We bombed back to base camp as fast as we could once we reached a fairly "bomb-able" road and settled in for the evening. On the agenda: A fire and bar-b-que...

...hanging with the drunken pilots that greet us each year here...

...and watching the full moon dance across the sky with the clouds...

While hanging at the fire that night with the drunken pilots we saw 2 riders pull in fairly late. Ray was on his F800 and "Racy" Lacy was on her BMW G650X. They set up camp and joined us at the fire. Seems they were up for a bit of adventure so we all decided to head over Domingo Pass in the morning and boogie out to Fields for a burger and shake.

It poured all night, complete with tons of lightning and thunder.
Adventure, indeed...




WoodsChick

 

[Brokenlink]

Fuck yeah.

 

[veefereefer]

I double that Fuck yeah and raise you one! Great report as always and I love the photography!