CONUS Conquered...September 4, 2012...Day 6

(Kim's Perspective)
Today was highly entertaining.  We woke up, did the morning dog/trailer routine, geared up and headed to the Flint Creek ORV trails.  It took us awhile to get there - we didn’t take into account the fact that most of the roads leading to the trailhead would be dirt.  :)  We arrived and were slightly surprised to see that there was NO ONE there.  Well, actually, there was a work crew there cleaning up the trailhead parking lot, but they pulled out quickly and we were left to enjoy the trails all by our little lonesomes.  I guess that’s not a word.  I’m using it anyway.  

We paid our $3 per person fee and took off.  The trails were in great shape aside from a fair amount of mud puddles.  You can’t really expect anything less when a hurricane just passed through.  We were just glad to have nice weather and the whole place to ourselves.  

We stopped a few times to rest and get hydrated.  

I’m not usually a big sweater but with the humidity, black gear, and exhaustive efforts, I was drenched in sweat in no time.  It really is exhausting.  It makes road riding and 600+ mile touring days look like a cake walk.  It’s not like you can put your feet up on the highway pegs and ride one handed while you’re jamming to your MP3 player.  I suppose you can jam, but the only reason your feet would be up or you’d be riding one handed is because you’re wrecking.  :)
We rode both loops.  One was a little more technical than the other, but it was also much drier with far less 12"+ deep mud bogs to venture through.

I had far better luck successfully maneuvering the steep, rocky sections than the filthy mud pits that had an amazing way of taking all of my forward momentum and propelling it sideways in a flash.  Let's just say that the bikes are incredibly resilient to damage.  :)
We eventually made our way back to the trailhead and tried to clean the dried chunks of mud off the motors as best we could.  They are air-cooled after all and we had 20+ miles of gravel/asphalt roads to ride on the way home.

Again, Bill was having a great time and was super happy.  See?  He's SMILING. (gasp!)

We were both starving so after finding a restaurant recommended to us by one of the fine folks on STN and seeing they were closed, we headed down the road a piece... :)...and had lunch at Smith's.

When we walked in, there were four people in the whole place - and two of them were the staff.  They were also sitting there in the middle of the restaurant chain smoking.  What?  Oh, right.  No smoking in restaurants is not a rule around here.  The food was decent though it was hard to enjoy it given my disdain for consuming carcinogens with my meal.

We headed back to the campsite and spent a considerable amount of time washing mass quantities of mud off the bikes.

We took the Boys for a walk, came back and had dinner.  It was a pretty great day despite my gravitational challenges and frequent occasions spent pulling my bike out of the mud. :)