The Great Motorcycle Adventure

Going to the cabin is always an adventure, but I had no idea the kind adventures we had in store for us.

There are a number of guys I work with who own dirt bikes and work was slowing down this week, and it was a Friday off, so I thought I should invite a couple of them up for a couple nights and a full day of motorcycle riding up at the cabin!  I'd never been very far from the cabin, but I knew there were a lot of trails out there.

I was able to talk Larry Cooley into coming up for the trip.  We left work early on Thursday and loaded everything up in his truck and trailer, and then headed up to the cabin.  My dad was already up there and was just walking up the meadow from a fishing trip when we rode in on the bikes.  It was perfect timing! We had  a nice dinner of spaghetti and fresh rainbow trout, which went surprisingly well together!  Larry also had canned peas for the first time in decades...  That evening my dad made some of his famous cabin popcorn, which was delicious!

Larry took the california king bed down stairs which he described as sleeping in a cloud.  After breakfast we decided to head out on the bikes.  We took the trail up Bear Creek and checked out the plane crash at the top of the ridge.  There are 2 trails that go from there.  We decided to take the one on the right, which is called the Table Springs trail.  It was  a nice ride, and the table springs area is absolutely beautiful!  We saw tons of wildlife tracks in the dirt and it was super green. 

When we got to the end of that trail, we ended up on a forest service road.  So we rode around there for a while and ended up going to the right a ways.  We followed a trail off the end of the road, and before we knew it we were heading down very steep and extremely rocky slope.  Larry was ahead of me and signaled we needed to turn around.  So I rode down to the flat spot he was at and turned my bike around.  After a few try's and with his help pushing we got my bike back up the hill.  I parked my bike up the trail a ways and then walked back to help Larry.

When I got down there, he was 10-20 yards further down the hill.  That was not good.  There was no good place to get traction or to start riding up the hill where he was at.  It was just too steep and rocky.  So he decided to head down to the bottom of the hill (about 1/2 mile down) and start down there where it was flat again.  This proved to be a long, painful decision.

It was more level at the bottom, but there were no good trails going up.  After multiple attempts thwarted by rocks that his tires would spin out on, I started clearing the trail up the hill.  I moved a lot of rocks out of the way, and Larry was making pretty good progress up the hill.  Unfortunately the trail had to cut through some trees.  I did my best to clear it of loose rocks and sticks, and I was even pulling a giant branch back so he could ride by.

Everything was looking good.  He had plenty of speed, there weren't any loose rocks, but he had to make a pretty sharp turn to stay on the game trail and keep going up the hill.  When we went around the turn, he hit a rock or something that tossed him and his bike down the hill!  He was sliding on the rocks, and the bike was laying there just above him, still running, with gas pouring out.  I jump down, like I'm sliding in to home plate to hit the kill switch on the bike.  And then Larry points to the gas and says we better get the bike back up or he won't have any gas to get back to the cabin!  We get the bike back up, and the hill is so steep that his seat is above my head!  Larry had a pretty good fall, but he had his, boots, elbow pads and knee pads on to absorb most of the fall.

There was no good place to start so we decide to push the bike up the hill back to the original place we started our climb from.  It was another 5-10 yards straight up and it was hard!  We finally made it back to the starting place, and after a bit, Larry decided to make another attempt at the last part of the hill.  After a couple tries, we ended up walking the bike up the hill.  He was on one side running the controls, and I was pushing from behind.  We made it up, but it took about 2 hours in total to get up the hill. 

After some water we decided to head back to the cabin, have some lunch and try some more trails after that.  One thing we thought would have been really nice was a trail map.  And my dad said he had one, so he brought it out and gave it to us.  We were able to see what trail we took, and thought we knew where we were at when we went down the fateful hill.  And we also picked some trails that looked like they'd be a nice loop for after lunch.

Little did we know that the map would probably have qualified for antique status... 

We refilled the tanks and our water, and headed out at 3pm.  Based on the map it should have been under a 3 hour ride, and we told my dad where we were going and that we'd be back by 6.  We took off up the South Fork Trail, and about an hour later we got a fork in the trail.  Neither direction was marked, but we knew we needed to make a left at about that point for the trail we were looking for so we did.  We continued up the trail, which was a fairly challenging trail, steep in places, but we made it up without any troubles. 

We got to the top of that trail, and it didn't look at all like what we thought it was going to be based on our map.  We looked around a little, looked at the map some more, and figured out where we were at.  We were not on the trail we thought we were.  We had ended up following the South Fork Trail all the way up to the headwaters of the river!  It was beautiful, but we were a long ways from the cabin, and we were not riding back down that trail.

So we tried to interpret the map, which we now were starting to suspect the accuracy of, and had an idea of which way to go.  We were quite surprised to find what was like a 4 lane dirt highway up there.  And we asked a few people for help, showing them our map, and they were just as confused as we were because this giant road wasn't even on the map!  So we spent the next hour and a half (and 14 miles worth of gas) riding around dirt roads and trails looking for either of the trails we know would take us back to the plane crash and then take us home to the cabin.

We finally found the North Fork Trail.  Which we knew was one of the trails to the plane crash.  Unfortunately it was 7:30 at night when we found it.  But we were happy to have at least found a way home!  So we started down the trail.  After we went down 50-100 yards, there was a giant tree that had fallen across the trail.  So Larry blazed a track through the brush, over logs, and finally got around this massive tree.  I followed after, but we burned a lot of daylight that we didn't have just trying to get around this log.

So we hurried down the North Fork Trail as fast as we could.  It was a beautiful trail, and I'd really like to ride it again some day.  After we got down a ways, we came to another fork in the road.  We picked left based on where we thought we were (the map was utterly useless by now) and kept going.  We knew if we could make it back up to the plane crash we were only 3.5 miles from the cabin.

Our enemy was time.  The sun had already set and a lot of the trail is in the forest.  Not long after our split to the left, it got really, REALLY dark.  I was in the lead, and I could usually hear Larry behind me.  At some point, I couldn't hear him any more.  Sometimes he drops back so the trail isn't to dusty, etc, so I didn't think too much of it and kept heading up the trail.  After a few more minutes, I still couldn't hear him and I couldn't see a thing!  I had no idea where the trail was, where the drop off on the side was, or where the slope up the other side was.  So I parked my bike and went back down looking for Larry. 

I found him a few minutes down the trail.  I found out that when the sound of him disappeared, it was because he came around a turn, and the front of his bike went off the trail!  He had to pick his bike back up out of the weeds and then it wouldn't start.  Eventually it did, and he was going up the trail by dragging both feet trying to stay on it.  I told him I couldn't see and didn't want to ride any further.  It didn't take much convincing for Larry to agree it was probably the right thing to do to find a flat piece of dirt and call it a night. 

Remember how this was supposed to be a 3 hour ride (Gilligan's Island "3 hour tour" keeps playing in my mind whenever I say that)?  Well, we only had about half the stuff we needed.  We had some Cliff and Balance bars, as well as enough water in our water bottles and camelbak.  I also had my gerber multi-tool with me and a poncho that I cut in half to make 2 blankets out of.  We had no light other than the indiglo on my watch and no matches or lighter.

Suprisingly motorcycle helmets make pretty comfy pillows!  And they keep your head warm to boot!  But after a couple hours of laying there and not really sleeping, it started to get chilly, and Larry came up with an idea on starting a fire!

There was ZERO visibility which made gathering sticks and kindling quite challenging.  Larry's idea was to dip a stick in his gas tank, and then put it on his exhaust manifold, which gets red hot when he rev's his engine.  One of the challenges was that if I moved away from the kindling at all, I couldn't see it and it was quite hard to find again!  After a couple hours and multiple attempts later, we found a method that worked.  We drained some gas out of his tank into a water bottle.  We tore the worse than useless trail map up for fire starter, and we also dipped long pieces of the map into the tank (one of which still happens to be in the gas tank) to get it nice and flammable.  The gas in the water bottle was used to douse my kindling, and when we finally got the map burning I lit the kindling!  Larry had gone to lean his bike up against a tree, and when he got back I had quite a large fire burning.  He was like, "We're not trying to burn the forest down!"  And I said I didn't want it to go out again on me (recall the multiple attempts and 2 hours...)  One thing the fire did, aside from warm us up was provide plenty of light to gather fire wood for the rest of the night.

After the fire was going, the night was quite a bit warmer.  Larry and I discussed how nothing like this ever has happened to us, how it was our first campout of the year, and how we really, hoped our names wouldn't end up in the paper!

We let the fire die down to a small "cowboy" fire and we subsequently named the place "Cowboy Camp".  We spent the night in and out of sleep (mostly out of), and adding a stick or two to the fire whenever one of us would notice it had died down.  Around 5:00am the sky started to lighten, and by 6 it was pretty light out.  So we got up and started back up the trail.

It ends up we were only about a mile from the plane crash, which put us about 4.5 miles from the cabin.  We had no idea of this though when we called it a night.  We pulled up to the cabin at about 6:55.  My dad was quite relieved to see us!  At 7:00 am he was going to go down to Ehart's cabin and one was going to head out to the end of the road to call the sheriff and the other was going to start the search. 

He was worried, there were all kinds of things that could have happened to us out there.  From a break down, to falling down off the trail, to a bear attack, to being lost, running out of gas, etc.  He was pretty worried.  My HAM radio was at the cabin and he wrote out a little spiel that he was going to broadcast on it.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) he didn't figure it out because he accidentally changed the channel on it, so that distress call never went out.  He'd also written up the press release for us missing as well.  Our names definitely would have been in the paper!

When my dad was in bed that night, he said he was feeling a bit chilly, so he pulled on his 3rd blanket.  Then he thought about us, and if he was chilly we must be freezing!

We made it back safe, and hopefully having learned a bit from the experience.  We were almost prepared, but not quite.  We would have made it home with a light, and a lighter would have made a fire, much, much easier to start.  We learned the importance of having a good map, as well as the tools we needed when the challenges of the trail hit you.  This almost sounds like something out of a Sunday School lesson :)

We were tired, but safe, and I talked to Larry at work today, and he said he was ready for the next trip!

I am too, but I think I'll be asking for new map and a gps for Christmas this year!

The Annual Cabin Trip, 2011

I'm about a month late in making this post, so it will be a bit abbreviated.

Every summer we've lived in the Tri-Cities (a total of 2), we take the first week in August for a cabin trip.  It is partially to line up with my birthday, and it's also still driving season, so it is a good time to stock the place up, and it's easy to get entire families up there.

We went from Tuesday to Saturday.  Nolan, Steffenie, Lexa, Clara, my Dad, my Mom, and brother Brennan came.  A few of the Bambocks came up for part of the week too (Janet and the kids: James, Jacob, and Justin). 

It was a week filled with fishing, motorcycle riding, hiking, playing games and just enjoying the outdoors.  We taught Brennan Agricola and we even stepped it up to the full blown version!  We played some advanced farkle as well.

Lexa and Clara loved fishing!  Clara's idea of fishing is giving me her fishing rod and telling me where to cast it.  Lexa on the other hand, is a great little fisher girl!  She can cast well, get most of her own snags out, and caught quite a few fish!  Lexa, Brennan and I took a motorcycle ride up the river a few miles to a hole called "Big Red".  It's a little before the old cabin site.  She caught 2 really nice fish before I had my first cast in!

Brennan and I got a lot of good motorcycle riding in, and he really seemed to be getting into it.  He would ride the motorcycle up to first base camp and spend some time reading up there.

We also had a lot of fun with the radios.  We had 3 radios and used the cabin as the home base.  We could talk to the cabin from the bear creek trail head and down to the 10th ford.  Also we could talk to anyone up at first base camp as well.  We could probably have gone further up the mountain, but didn't have a chance to try it.  It was fun when someone would call in to report a fish they'd caught, or to find out where people were or when dinner was, etc.

Near we were delivered a letter from our favorite people at the BLM, and they said they noticed the salmon they'd dumped in the river were there and that they were so they were going to change the locks on the gate Friday, August 5th.  A full 10 days before they normal closure date.  This meant we had to drive most of the stuff out on Friday and then hike out on Saturday.  Very annoying.  Again the BLM is tyring very hard to deny us access to our land.  Seems to be consistent theme from them this year.

The first driving trip of 2011 -- July 29-30

It's a couple months after this trip actually happened, so this will just be a synopsis of the trip.

Brennan (my brother), Blake and I decided to take the first drive to the cabin.  There has been a struggle with the BLM this year and they are doing everything they can to keep us from accessing our land, so this trip was later than it usually would have been.

It's always fun to take people to the cabin the first time, especially during driving season!  Not many people these days actually get to cross rivers.  When we told him we had to cross it 10 times, Blake figured we meant on bridges or something.  It was quite a bumpy ride up the river, but luckily our neighboring land owner, Greg, drove up with us and showed us the route to take!

If I get a chance I'll add the videos of crossing the river and some pics to the blog.

We went up Friday after work, and the next morning we hiked up Mt. Blalock.  This is a huge accomplishment for me, because it is the first time I made it to the top since I was in high school!

It was a short, but a fun trip!

Easter Bunnies at the cabin? 4/21/11 - 4/23/11

(Note: If you click on the pictures they will open full size)

April here is usually warm and beautiful.  The winter cold is past, and the heat of the summer isn't upon us yet.  That is what Friday and Saturday were like... But on Thursday when we were driving to the end of the road, the clouds got steadily darker and darker, and it started slush/snowing on us.  By the end of the road it was a really wet snow.  Fortunately the VanDyke's had some poncho's and garbage bags we converted into ponchos for the girls.  Somehow we talked the whole VanDyke clan into a weekend at the cabin.  Shayne wasn't worried about the snow at all.  "It builds character" he kept saying... I am very impressed with Karena and her being all for hiking 3.42 miles in the snow up to the cabin with 10 month old on her back!

We got out of town a little late, and then with the snow probably went a little slower on the road than normal.  And then the snow and mud slowed up the hike, so we ended up about 2 hours 30 minutes hiking in.  Which meant we were in the dark about the last hour.

Clara being snowed on at the End of the Road

Steff all poncho'd up and ready for an exciting hike in!

Clara is only 3 and can't walk all the way.  Steff is amazing and carried a pack and Clara whenever she couldn't walk.

Nolan trying to keep Clara and Alayna VanDyke out of mud puddles...

Sometimes I ended up in them!

The camera got some moisture in it. I think that's Karena and Kason on her back.

Another muddy, snowing trail shot

 That night we fired up the wood stove and heated up water for hot cocoa (not hot chocolate... Alayna corrected me on that one).  We were all dead tired that night.  The VanDyke's took the upstairs and we took the downstairs rooms.

That morning everyone work up warm, happy and hungry!  It was my day to cook, so I fired up the stove and make pancakes, bacon and eggs.  2lb's of bacon is more than we could eat, even for Mikayla!  At breakfast we all chose our cabin names for the trip.
The Wright's:
Nolan -- Big Papa Flyfish: No story, just a good name!
Steffenie -- Steamy: When she was taking her pack off the night we arrived, the cabin was quite cool, and steam was rising off of her back!
Lexa -- Mikayla. She likes to have nick-names of other real people. This time she chose the name of someone else on the cabin trip. Very confusing! We need to work with her on the whole nick-name thing.
Clara -- Claraboo.  This is her favorite nick-name, so we decided to keep going!

The VanDyke's:
Shayne: Mountain Weasel: If I remember correctly he has had a lot of nick names with "weasel" in them over the years...
Karena: Dropper Spotter: Definitely a story to this one!  She saw a tiny spider dropping from the ceiling, and said "I see a spider dropping" and all the rest of us thought how is it possible you can even see "spider droppings?"  They gotta be too small to even see!  She meant that the spider was dropping from the ceiling... But the name stuck!
Mikayla: Pig Eater: She likes bacon, what can I say?
Damon: Ninja Master
Alayna: Super Hiker: She is only 4 and hiked all the way up in the mud and snow!
Kason: He didn't have a cup, so no cabin name :(

Super Hiker (Alayna) and Claraboo (Clara) enjoying the pancakes and bacon.

Big Papa Flyfish, the Friday morning breakfast cook. Love that crazy hair!

Pig Eater (Mikayla), Ninja Master (Damon), Mikayla (Lexa) and a rear-view of Mountain Weasel (Shayne)...

Dropping Spotter (Karena) and Kason enjoying the fire

Some of the snow was still around by morning

This was Claraboo's "Motorcycle"

Nolan and Shayne working on getting the honda 125 back running

The rest of the trip was filled with sun and warm weather.  I think it made up for the wet hike, but I don't know if I've Steff convinced of that yet.  We spent most of the time playing outdoors and hiking.  Shayne and I took the kids on a hike while the mom's and younger kids took naps.  We walked by some of the other cabins and then followed game trails home after crossing a stream.  Shayne brought a pellet gun up and we all did some target practice.  Lexa out-shot me!  Eventually I hit the can, but she hit it before I did! That'll have to play into her next cabin name.

Alayna, Damon and Lexa on the swings

Karena tied on the old, flat tether-ball.  The kids didn't mind, plus it didn't hurt to hit!

Kason had a great time!

Lexa smiling on the swing

More swinging

Lexa got her boots stuck more than once in the mud

Alayna swi\nging, Clara on the slide, and Damon and Mikayla on the teeter-totter

 Swing Montage of Clara and Alayna with Kason in the background

This is the "cougar print" Steff and Nolan saw when we went out on a hike!  At least that's what we told Karena when we got back... We had her going, but I caved and told her it was most likely a large dog.  You can see the claws are extended. Cougars retract them when they walk.

Nolan hiking

We had cup-o-noodles and regular ramen for lunch on Friday.  That means we have at least 3 packets of Shin Ramen (aka hot soup) at the cabin for future trips!  That night we built a fire to roast hot dogs and sausage on for dinner out in the fire pit.  After that Shayne and I started the clean out of the wood shed.  We built the fire into a bon-fire and tossed all the boxes of wood with rats nests and everything that we could shovel out.  There is still a good bit of cleaning to be done to the wood shed and next time we'll bring up some canned foam to seal all the corners.

After working on the wood shed we figured it would be best to shower up.  And I can say that the cabin shower works great!  There are only 2 things to keep in mind.  To start the shower pull the spout knob out and hold it out until water is coming out the shower head. And second the temperature knob works fine, there is just a small range between all hot and all cold. It is a low flow shower, but it gets plenty hot!

This is probably the right time to note that both Shayne and Karena were pantsless at one time or another in the living room!  We just averted our gaze.

I also brought up my arduino datalogger I'd been working on.  Unfortunately it stopped working part way through the trip, so I brought it back to do some more work on it.


That night the kids watched a movie up stairs and the parents played some Ruckus and Scum.  We also donated Farkle to the cabin games.  We changed things up on scum a bit. We used 2 decks (including 4 jokers) for 4 people.  It was a ton of cards.  And we played you could go around as many times as it takes until every passed.  I won every round but one, and odds are I always had jokers.  The last round (which I lost) Shayne was VP and ended up with 3 of the jokers.  That was hard to beat!

The next morning Shayne was in charge of breakfast. We had french toast, another 2lbs of bacon and cheese with some eggs mixed in!  Shayne packed up an entire block of cheese and wasn't too interested in packing it down, so we had lots of cheese.  He also brought up a whole pound of butter and a full ranch salad dressing too...  Come on Shayne, it builds character, right?

We brought up Easter Eggs and candy.  Steff and Karena filled the eggs and conducted a successful easter egg hunt.  Said hunt was mentioned by many of the kids when asked what their favorite part of the trip was.  While the eggcitement was going on, Shayne and I took a motorcycle ride to the end of the road and dropped off a couple backpacks chock full of gear, food, garbage, etc., so the hike down would be much easier.  Plus we got to go on a moto ride!  Shayne is getting much better on the motorcycle, most impressive!

Let the Easter Egg Hunt Begin!

One thing this spring has brought was a lot of mud!  So while Shayne and I were working on the wood shed, we put the kids to work on extending the back porch out.  We also added a brick and paver path behind the cabin.  There is supposed to be a french drain back there, but it must be clogged or something because it was a muddy mess! 

There are piles of bricks, cinder blocks, pavers, etc sitting around, and we figured they could be put to good use, and the kids got to help out with a project!  And when we started using we unearthed "Cragmont" pop cans from 20 yrs ago (based on the expiration date) that were used as bb-gun targets! They looked good as new. Those cinder blocks seemed a lot further away when I was 20 years younger...

The extended porch!

Lexa on the new path behind the cabin

Lexa showing off the new porch

Lexa on her way to say her final good-byes to Mrs. Murphy

Lexa posing in the sun

Alayna, Mikayla, Lexa and Damon with backpacks on the outdoor bar ready to head home

Shayne with Kason strapped on his back!

Kason loved hiking

Nolan locking the cabin door

Group Photo as we leave

Another with me in it

Steff carried Clara most of the way out, but it was a lot easier because I already took her pack down. Clara still has easter candy in hand

Clara took a nap on Steff's back. Sometimes she would lean back. She is sound asleep in this pic!

We made it to the end of the road!!!

It was a beautiful hike down and there were people everywhere!  I don't think they hiked all the way in to the cabin, but there were tons of people, cars, and dogs too.  And Shayne's van was dead.  It seems that all the kids left interior lights on inside... Lucky for him I always carry jumper cables!  After we brought his car back to life and got his fancy power doors working again, we headed into town for a final dinner at Milton-Freewater Dairy Queen.  We were back home Saturday evening with plenty of time to give the girls baths so they'd be clean and squeaky for their new Easter dresses to wear to church Sunday.