2009 Father's Day Ride

When we started talking about this years long ride we realized that the ATVNation national ride was going to be in Wallace the week of 6/22. That pretty much made our minds up. The rough plan was to ride from Athol to Wallace hopefully meet up with some of the ATVNation folks then continue heading south if we had the time and make a run through Avery, and back up through Enaville. Little overly optimistic as it turned out.

I met Chris at the Country Boy Café in Athol for breakfast. We were a little worried about the weather, for 10 days the weather man promised it would be crap on 6/22 and supposedly it was going to be pretty nice for the rest of the week. But nobody likes to start a week of sleeping outside with the first night being a rainy one. As it turned out the weather man nailed it. This was just about as bad as it got the whole time. Overcast all day the first day and then beautiful the rest of the time (save one thunder storm later in the week but I’ll get to that)

We made camp just down stream from the Berlin Flats campground right on the river. Awesome camp. We put the beers in the “fridge” made camp, then busted out the chainsaw and put up some wood for our fire.

Then we got down to the business of relaxing It was still overcast and ugly when the sun went down. About 23:30 or so I looked up and saw one lone star, at 00:00 I looked up again and the sky was completely clear. Things are looking up.

Day two’s goal was to make it to Murray and back into the woods. On the way we did some general screwing around and exploring

We got to Murray just about lunch time so we had a couple beers and a pizza. Loaded up and headed back out. We stopped at the Murray graveyard and wandered around looking at the head stones.

It was getting on the late side so we decided to head up Potosi gulch and find a place to spend the night.

This was supposed to put us in striking distance of a trail we wanted to run (151) that poured out in the Burke area.

We broke camp without eating breakfast and started down the road. We found the last bits of snow at about 5,000’ or so in the shady corners

Turns out the trail 151 was completely choked off with downed trees and just looking at the first couple yards it was apparent that we’d have to spend most of the day clearing trail. Not something we wanted to do so we back tracked and rode pavement down to Wallace (siggggh pavement on ATV’s is just horrible for the soul.

We restocked gas, beer, and ammo for our .22 pistols (camp diversion) and took off for the woods again. We didn’t want to go the same way we came in so we did a little more road riding to Osburn and took off up the Two Mile Creek road. There was an interesting little trail on the map that looked like it would get us to a good camp site right on the river. The trail was a blast lots of technical two track stuff with enough off camber action to make it interesting on a heavily loaded ATV.

As it turned out it did get REALLY close to the river but that was about all it did. That side of the river is steep as hell and while the trail got us to within 50 yards of the river a couple of times there was just no way to get close enough to make camp.

So we just kept moving. This is what makes these rides fun is that we really don’t have any kind of plan and we’re free to move around and do as we please. Since it was getting on the late side we were a little rushed when we decided to make camp. But I did have time to make us some delicious tacos.

After dinner we set about our nightly routine of sitting around the fire and having a few beers. About 21:30 it started raining. Early night. It rained off and on for a few hours and then about 01:30 the lightning and thunder came to visit. It was a pretty impressive if not short lived show. I was kicking myself for not taking my camera to bed with me, because the view of the sunrise from inside my hammock was stunning.

We broke camp after a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and headed towards the Magee area. This is a part of the drainage that we know like our own back yards so we were definitely on the home stretch.

We stopped at the Spyglass Lookout which for a change wasn’t completely clouded in.

We made camp right on the river and settled in for our last night “out”

We got up to yet another absolutely gorgeous morning, made a big pot of coffee, and finished off the last of our bacon and eggs. Stopped for the obligatory shot at the Magee ranger station.

Did some screwing around and generally took our time heading home.

All total we did 300 miles in 5 days and had a blast. Can’t wait until next year. All of our gear worked flawlessly, no issues of any kind. Once again I'd like to say just how much I LOVE my Clark hammock, four nights of sleeping in it and I was kind of dreading sleeping in a real bed. That SOB is THAT comfortable.