Home
Basic Dirt Bike How-To's - Video
Dirt Bike How-To's - Video
Living The Moto Life - Video
Bike Tests | Shoot-Outs - Video
Forums
What's new
Latest activity
Log-In
Join
What's new
Menu
Log-In
Join
Navigation
Install the app
Install
More options
Close Menu
Forums
Other Dirt Bike Discussions
Who to Ride With, Where to Ride
By Region
Northern USA
MCCCT Trail Safari Ride Report.
Reply to thread
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Message
[QUOTE="YZMAN400, post: 1080148, member: 49098"] [B]DAY #2[/B] 7:00am Up and getting packed. We rolled out around 9:00am I think. We didn’t seem to get moving all that fast. I think some of it was just trying to get our packing system down. Once we were all packed up it was determined that the nearest gas/food was Boon. It was about an hour ride up there. Oh 1st I need to introduce the 5th member of our group. Rick aka Sndmn2. Rick is riding his DRZ400. Rick was up to Wolverine the weekend before for the CCC event. He headed down to meet up with us at the campground. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/rickspackout.jpg]> Ricks bike packed up<[/url] 9:00am So anyways we are finally packed up and on the trail again and heading north. Funny thing is the 1st piece of trail we dove into was a nice rutty hill climb…Good morning….everyone awake now! This is one of my favorite trails in the area. I love to ride here. We made pretty good time on up to Boon. No real issues that I can recall. Oh I was nice enough to let Tim lead thru here. I figured that he had never ridden here before so why not let him get 1st dibs on the trail. That and there was lots of water in the trees and cobwebs aplenty. He did a fine job of clearing those out for the rest of us :laugh: 11:00am We made the turn to the Boon turnoff and had to wait for Rick. He had to stop and reattach his luggage. It was shifting. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/messagetorick.jpg]>We made a sign for him in the sand<[/url] and were just about ready to head off when he showed up. We all took off for Boon for gas and whatever food we could find there. When we got there Rick was no where to be found. Pretty soon he showed up with a tale to tell. Apparently he was daydreaming going down the dirt road and didn’t notice the soft spot in the road from the logging trucks. He got into a speed wobble and judging from the marks in the road he was flung about 50 yards down the road. Rick said that he was sure that he was going to be seriously hurt. But someone must have been looking out for him because he got away without a scratch. Only damage was a broken Bug eye mirror and broke the plastic trim off the mouth guard of his helmet. After seeing his tracks I can verify that he got off really easy. His helmet even has some serious road rash on the LH side. [url=http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y129/tallboyswrf/MCCCT/100_0076.jpg]> Ricks aftermath <[/url] So now we are gassed up and fed at the Boon gas station. If you ever get up there you must stop in. The owners are super nice people that will bend over backwards for you. Any gas station that stocks Helmet fresh and Scott no fog wipes has it going on in my book. 12:00pm. Back on the trail. We took a while getting up to 32nd street. Tim and Jason were having a hard time in this section of trail. They just couldn’t seem to get a rhythm in there. I ended up dumping my backpack and running back to check on Jason. Man it sure is easier riding without a 15lb pack on your back. Once we had everyone out to 32nd street we started to make up some time. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/boon3.jpg]>Rick on Boon trail<[/url] [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/boon2.jpg]>Tim on Boon trail<[/url] [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/boon1.jpg]>Rudy on Boon trail<[/url] The next section of trail is 2-track for a while before hitting some nice single track north of 115. Unlike the previous section of trail we made much better time thru here. From here on up is where I am in virgin ground. I have never rode any of the trail from here on out. This is where the GPS really comes in handy. It tells you how far to the next turn. Really helpful when traveling along. There were a few hiccups in the gps tracklogs along the way but for the most part it worked really well. In areas were I missed a turn it was pretty easy to figure out. All you have to do is look at the miles to next turn field and realize that the mileage is going up and not down. I also took the CCC maps that come with the safari cd and reduced them to fit into a 6x7 cycoactive mapcase that mounted to my bars. I then had the maps laminated back to back to keep them dry. Between the maps and the gps I can’t think of a better setup. It worked perfect all week. And the resized laminated maps fit perfect in the cover of my cycoactive # plate bag. Sweet. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/mccct%20maps%20and%20picts/mapholder.jpg]> Map holder <[/url] Never mind the elephant ear hand guards I took that pict in the winter From north of 115 up to Manton was all 2-tracks as I recall. But some really nice 2-tracks. Not all sandy and wooped out. These were very nice and scenic. Some of them were totally grass covered. You come to appreciate some of these 2-track sections every once in a while. They allow you to relax after a trail section and make up some time. While traveling down one of these 2-tracks I saw a really strange sight. This trail was wall to wall vegetation on the sides. No room for anything but what is on the trail. Well coming down the 2track at us was probably a 30ft motor home towing a boat I think. I started to get to the side thinking it’s gonna be easier to get outta his way than him outta ours. But to my surprise he slid to the side to let us thru. He even smiled and waved as we went by, strange. 3:30pm We made a side trip when we got near to Manton. Rick had left his truck and trailer there at a friend’s house. We stopped there to offload some unnecessary gear. I think everyone started to realize that less was more. If it’s not absolutely necessary don’t bring it. For a trip like this you need to pack for the absolute bare essentials. And keep everything as minimal as possible. Good rule of thumb is if you don’t use everything in your pack at least once a day you probably don’t need it. With the exception of things you bring that you hope you won’t need like a 1st aid kit. My sealine bag that held my tent gear doubled as a pillow once stuffed with my rain gear and spare clothes. My bungee cords that held my tent pack to my rack doubled as a cloths line. Find 2 trees close together and wala instant clothes line. If no tree is available I would attach 2 bungees from the hand guards to my rear rack on each side, instant clothesline. There was a comment about my bungee handlebar clothesline being a redneck steering damper. Point of all this is to try and make all your gear as multi use as possibly to save space and keep the weight down. Cause as light as I got my gear my X still handled like a dump truck with all that extra weight on it. You adapt as the week goes on. But it’s a workout. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/improvisedclothsline.jpg]>Make shift cloths line<[/url] So having shed some weight from the bikes and body’s and topped off our tanks from the gas in Ricks trailer we were back on the road. A quick look to the sky told me that we were in for more rain. Thankfully we were heading north. I was hoping that we would be able to outrun the storm. And for quite a while we did. Thankfully we managed to miss the worst of it. That is until we got into the Grand Taverse loops. The rain came down. But being in the woods it wasn’t that bad, until we got up to Kalkaska. 5:00pm Tim needed to get some new rear brake pads. So we headed down the road to the local Yamaha shop. We were all pretty soggy by the time we got there. Road riding in the rain sucks. The rain on your face hurts. The Yamaha shop was a pretty small shop but they seemed to have what you needed. I don’t know how the name came up but talking to the one of the shop guys he looked up and said “You know Ted?” I am like young Ted Desolar…He was like yea that Ted….Timer you sure get around. Seems everybody knows you. Something funny that happened at the shop, and I guess you would have to be there to understand, is Jason walked by with a fairly large stick hanging off his backpack. I asked him if it was a souvenir or some special Husaberg metric stick. I don’t think he got my humor and turned to walk away so I re-attached to his backpack and off he went…lol Well out of the shop we headed to get some food. It was looking like Big Boy or MD’s. One look at us confirmed that MD’s was our place. We wrecked that place. Like club 37 we took over a large area of the lounge. When we left the tables were wet. The floors were wet. The chairs were wet. It was not a pretty sight. But what the heck….were on vacation! As we were outside to gear up again I put my backpack on and the shoulder strap broke were it attached to the bottom of the pack…Crap. Now what? I loosened up the strap and tied it to a strap next to it and reinforced it with the handy mans helper…Duct tape. Don’t leave home without it. It lasted the rest of the trip with no troubles at all. “If they don’t find you handsome they should at least find you handy….Red Green” [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/kalkaskalunch.jpg]>group shot at McDonalds<[/url] So we got some gas and headed back to the trail. I want to take a minute and talk about convenience stores. I don’t go in them very often anymore. I use my debit card to pay at the pump. Well I know why I don’t go in those stores much. People in there are idiots. It almost became the running joke that in every store we went to there was someone in front of us spending his paycheck on lotto tickets. And in almost every store we went to there was a clerk behind the counter that didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I swear these people have no consideration for the customers at all. As long as they make there minimum wage they are happy. If anyone that is reading this works at a store like this I am sorry. Not trying to offend. But man those stores were driving me bonkers after a while. 6:30pm So anyways back on the trail. We were in Leetsville. I am not impressed with this system at all. Just wide sandy orv route, nothing special. We were just about out of this system when Rudy fell back. Turns out his Rack lost a bolt and spacer. Tim lived a short distance away from there so Tim and Rudy made tracks to his house for parts while the rest of us continued on to Pickerel Lake were we were thinking of camping for the night. These promotobillet racks and others like it are a work of art. But the attachment method on the bikes I have seen leave something to be desired. You need to locktite everything and then check the bolts often to make sure they are still tight. If you are doing a ride like this I would suggest carrying spare bolts and spacers in case some of them walk away on the trail. Mine stayed tight all week. But I kept on checking it anyways. Dont overload those racks. They really hang off the back of the bike and overloading them will put too much stress on the subframe. I wouldn't put more than 10 lbs on them. Probably more like 6 lbs to be safe. The leverage that rack puts on the subframe going thru the woops has got to be high. 7:30pm Rudy and Tim returned after fixing Rudy’s rack. We talked about camping there for the night. I really wanted to get up to Weber Lake that night to camp. But being at camp had thoughts of sleep passing thru my head. A few people started talking about how far north it was and I jumped on the bandwagon and started pushing north again (woodsy syndrome). But to save time and a beating on our bodies we cut out Kalkaska. Tim rides that all the time and confirmed that Kalkaska was nothing but woops. Plus if we rode Kalkaska there was no way we would make Wolverene. A friend of mine gave me a tip that turned out worked pretty good. When it’s getting late in the day, pick a campground that is a few hours away and go for it. This worked out pretty good for us as well. North of Kalkaska it is pretty much roads up to Wolverene. We hit Wolverene about dark thirty. Riding some of that trail around dusk was interesting. I need to get back up there to explore some of that trail. 9:30pm We finally got to Weber Lake campground and setup camp. Taking a bath in the lake never felt so good. To be clean….ahhhhh.. [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/weberlake1.jpg]>camp pict #1<[/url] [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/weberlake2.jpg]>camp pic #2<[/url] [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/weberlake4.jpg]>Weber Lake pict #1<[/url] [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/CRF250X/MCCCT%20Safari/weberlake3.jpg]>Weber Lake Pict #2[/url] Rick came back from the lake with a black garbage bag. A quick peak in the bag revealed a case of beer he had fished out of the lake. Rick, knowing we would be up there to camp had stashed it in the lake for us. Man that tasted good after a long day on the trail. 11:00 pm Bed. Mileage for the day was around 150 I think. Another tip that a friend told me is to listen to a radio at night thru headphones when you sleep. It blocks out the background noises of the forest. And as it turns out it also blocks out the sounds of the other 4 exhausted snoring dirt bikers. Now if you ask them they will tell you that it was me snoring all night and that I kept them up all night. I know I snore. But I aint the only one! On other nights I woke up to a symphony of snoring. I pity any campers near us that slept lightly while we were there. Anyways that radio trick worked great. The 1st night I was awake ½ the night and I didn’t use the radio. The rest of the week I slept like a rock. Now some of that could be because I was wiped out at the end of the day. But I like to think the radio helped some also. To be continued………. [/QUOTE]
Verification
Which ocean is California closest to?
Post reply
Forums
Other Dirt Bike Discussions
Who to Ride With, Where to Ride
By Region
Northern USA
MCCCT Trail Safari Ride Report.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
Accept
Learn more…
Top
Bottom