There will actually be two trip reports for this. There will be mine and hopefully Cheston will post his report.
We things loaded up and were on the road by a little after 6am, stopped in Logan to eat breakfast and then headed put Beaver Mountain.
Three miles up the trail, I got a flat on my rear tire. I told the other guys I would go back to Logan and get my tire fixed and meet them in St Charles for lunch.
So off I went to ride back to the truck, loaded up and took off down the road to Logan. A mile down the road, I head the state road painting crew. Finally after about 15 minutes of having to follow them, they finally pulled off to let the cars go by.
My first stop was the Honda dealer in N. Logan, they told me they couldn’t touch it and then they pointed me to a little cycle shop just south of them a few hundred yards. They too told me they were too busy. They pointed me to a snowmobile/motorcycle shop further north a mile or so.
When I finally go there, they hustled me back and pulled the wheel and separated the tire from the rim. The hole looked like a pinch but they had the wrong tube so off they went to the Honda dealer to get me the correct tube. Finally after watching guy wrestle with the two rim locks I asked if I could show him a shortcut and he smiled and said sure like I was going to get my ass handed to me as well. A few minutes later, I was on my way with a new tube and the guy with a new technique to quickly mount a double rim locked wheel. While the tire was off, we checked for anything sharp in the tire and also made sure all the spokes were okay.
I took off back to Beaver Mountain with no slow-downs and unloaded again. This time I took off up the highway (plated WR450) to Bear Lake and St. Charles Idaho. The plan was to meet at the Bear Paw Inn for lunch. I made it there 15 minutes before they did.
At lunch all the talked about was the crazy cliff with only 6 inches of trail along it, the 4 foot drop, the Ice Caves, and on and on. I sat there hoping they would go back the same way they had come because originally, they were going to take an ATV trail back from Fish Haven. It was decide much to my excitement that they would go back the same way.
Off we go back up the asphalt toward the canyon that follows the St Charles stream and just near the top, the back end of my WR gets squirrely again. I pull over to find my rear tire flat again. In 38 years of riding motorcycles, I have never ever gotten a flat on a ride. Normally, I would have carried a spare tube and tire irons but seeing how it’s never me with the flats, I left them on my work bench because I didn’t want the weight in my backpack.
I tell the guys to go ahead and I will try to get back to Beaver Mountain and if I’m not there, load up and come find me because I am going to try to limp back to the main road and see if I could get a truck to haul me back to Beaver Mountain. By the time I limped back to Garden City (15 miles), my rear tire was shot and during that whole time there was only one truck that was empty that passed, everything was cars so I eventually made it to Garden City and waited for them to come get me.
I only had to wait 30 minutes or so before they came down the road. They had decided to take a quicker way back to the trailer. The whole way back they laughed and talked about how much fun that ride was and just had to sit there hoping they will want to run it again before snow fall. I did see a squirrel, a snake and two cow elk. My nephew took his Go-Pro so I do have that to look forward to watching and I will post a link when I get it.
The funny thing on the way home at about Willard, the tire sensor goes off on my Expedition. I pull over and everything was good. I would have lost it if I had gotten a flat on my car.
Our next trip is the 26th on the Paiute Trail.
As soon as Caleb gets home from his tropical trip, I am ordering all new tires and tubes.
