THE CARSON NATIONAL FOREST

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I made coffee in the morning heating water with my alcohol stove. I must have brought 8 or 10 stoves to try out my latest designs. Of note is that tin can with all the holes in it on the seat.....that one burns twigs or balled up paper.
I usually put a handful of twigs in the can, and add a splash of alcohol for fire starter. The twigs are free and it burns in a breeze unlike alcohol stoves....and you can add more twigs at anytime.
My IC map showed a bunch of dirt roads in the area. I figured to give the DR a workout today. Looked like a 100 miles of forest roads in the area. :clap

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

There were a few relics of the past.......

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

A family of beavers had been busy in the area.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Note the trees stumps in the middle of the pond.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

These beavers were very busy...kinda over achievers.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

These stumps were 16" or 18" thick.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I took a little [URL="http://youtu.be/Ac2y2gibTOo"]video[/URL] today....please ignore the thumb. :wink: Note that the road is not challenging...just right for me or anyone with a big Adventure bike.
I had chosen to go to Canjilon some 30 miles away. I didn't have a full tank when I left so I needed to gas up there.
I took a side road out toward '15 Springs'. I never saw the springs but scenes like this one were all I needed to make the side road worthwhile.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I got as high at 9500 ft at Canjilon Lakes.....

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

The other lake

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Canjilon was a nice little town, but no store of any kind. I had to go out to hwy84 and north a few miles to Anthony Martin's Maverick store/bar/gas station. Anthony was a pleasant guy so I had a couple drinks with him.
Anthony had a Maverick station with some old out building. He showed me a brand new Corvette and a show Harley in one of them with a new pickup out front. Yes Anthony, behind me, was doing ok. Nice guy....

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I got back to the ride and reentered my route back at Canjilon. I'd take the southern route back to my camp at El Rito.
Not far south of Canjilon my DR ran out of fuel. I knew it was fuel starvation as I couldn't drain any fuel out of the float bowl via it's drain. I figured it must be another booger in the float needle....damn.
Well if a booger can flow into the needle then I should be able to suck on the fill line and get it out of there. I took the fuel line loose from the tank and gave it a few good sucks.   Sucking that block out of the hose was a lot easier than doing a whole carb R&R.

The fuel began to flow out of the float bowl drain....and more to the point was that the DR started and I was able to finished the ride.
Somehow I lost all the rest of the pictures of the day. But no matter, it was just more beautiful mountain forest scenes.
I finished the circuit at about 1:45. I was in time to get a seat at Farlito's 15 ft wide Mexican cafe in El Rito before they went to siesta at 2:pm. Damn good food.
Cody was an engaging young man doing waiter duty. He was born and raised in Long beach Ca. I've no idea how he got to this BFE small town. He was doing online courses to get into the computer game business. I can't imagine what that entails. Cody told me of the free wifi at the library down the road a couple miles.
The wifi tip was great....after lunch I went to the Library and spent an hour on one of their computers. Good stuff.
About 4:30 I was back at camp. I stumbled around there for a while...I'd finished my Hillerman book....what to do, what to do.....
Well, there was another forest road that went 15 or so miles over to Vallecitos where it connected to a paved road to Canon Plaza....where'd that name come from, I'll never guess. :D
The new forest road was cool, as they all are. It went up for a while...I passed a bicyclist. I slowed as I went by and asked him where he was going. He gave me a weird look and said 'Canada'. Wow, I thought, and rode off.
A few miles later I came on another bicyclist. I matched his speed and again asked where he was going. He was more talkative.
I found out that he and the other biker were in a 15 man race from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide Trail. Ah soo....now I know why the first guy looked at me weird.
This guy, Russ Mcbride, had broken a petal in Abq and it took a day to get his bike fixed. Because of that he said he was fresh, and would ride another 6 or 7 hours today, about 180 miles for the day. I learned that I could track them at the 'Tour Divide race' tracking page.
I did track him for the next week. somewhere near the Montana border Russ was listed as scratched. I'll alway wonder what happened to him. Maybe he was eaten by a bear.
I rode on, and not far away I ran into a bicycler with a trailer who was from Minnesota. He was just out here kinda following the bike race and testing himself as he might try this race one day.
He had time to talk so I learn a lot about what was going on. Pretty interesting stuff. 15 riders had started out from Antelope Wells on the Mex border racing north, and 75 guys had started out at the Canadian border heading south. As we talked, I began to appreciate gasoline all the more. :freaky
I continued on to Canon Plaza and a few miles beyond, then I turned around and back tracked to camp passing all my new bicycle friends.
Back at camp I had a bowl of Ramen noodles and finished off a bag of chips for dinner.

I would leave my little paradise in the morning.....