• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Searching For New Stuff In The Same Old Desert

Just a quick note about my RevIt Gear...I wore it every day in the rain and it kept me really warm and dry. The outside would get wet, but the waterproof liner never let it get to my clothes or skin. The next morning the outside would be completely dry and it would be ready for more. I like the fact that I was able to put all my T-Pro armor in it, too. It was pretty trashed when I got home but a quick run through the washer and it looked brand new again. Love it :thumbsup:
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Thank you Woodsie. I do love your work. By the way my local riding area is being burnt to the ground as we speak. Massive 350 KM circle of flames
 
Thank you Woodsie. I do love your work. By the way my local riding area is being burnt to the ground as we speak. Massive 350 KM circle of flames

Ugh! That is heartbreaking, ghte :( I'm sorry to hear it. Hopefully it'll at least bring a massive explosion of wild flowers for you.
 
After tooling around in the rain for the early part of the day, we dropped down out of the Pueblo Mountains and made our 2nd trip to Fields in as many days. No way was I leaving Oregon without a Fields burger and shake :oldman:
It was as good as I'd hoped, and it made the rainy ride back to camp totally worth it. Not long after returning to camp, though, the sun came out and it turned into a fantastic day.
We took full advantage of it by taking my Husky TR650 Terra out for some exploring.
Virgin Valley is beautiful beneath blue and white skies...
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At first glance it looks pretty remote and barren...
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But if one looks closely, there are signs of life everywhere...
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Not to mention opals...
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We headed out towards the ponds. Love the lettering in the Virgin Valley area of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge...
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After birdwatching at the ponds, we both agreed it would be better to take the long way back. Isn't it always?
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Ran across this crazy thing and wouldn't have known what it was had I not seen something similar down in the Los Padres National Forest...
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Birds get thirsty out in the desert...
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This guy was hanging out with a herd of wild burros. Interesting white brand on his rump...
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Hmm...what's that white stuff over there near the ridge? Let's go check it out!
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Oh come on Woodsie I need to know what that white stuff on the horizon is now. Its like waiting for next seasons NCIS. So please make with the explanation
 
Oh come on Woodsie I need to know what that white stuff on the horizon is now. Its like waiting for next seasons NCIS. So please make with the explanation

Hah! Sorry. I had to start primping for a date and I ran out of time :)
The date ran late, so...
Hopefully I'll wrap this up this evening!
 
A hidden playa! Less than 10 miles from where we've been camping for years!
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Let the fun begin!
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Time to let the clutch cool off...
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Playas are huge fun, and we had this one all to ourselves. They are not fun in the rain, though, so the first drops had us scrambling off the playa post haste. The track that's visible in front of the bike was left by us on the way out. These roads don't get much use...
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Of course the sun came out as soon as we left the playa and headed for base camp...
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The beautiful Pueblo Mountains...
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The rain over the mountains paid off big-time as we headed back to camp...
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The grassy sections still had quite a bit of moisture in the ground, and there was a bit of standing water in the ruts. This section smells so good all the time, but it's incredibly sweet when it's been raining...
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The source of much happiness...
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Always look up...
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The last campfire is always bittersweet...
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We slept well that night, as we always do in the desert. The sounds of the wild burros did not keep us awake, thus leaving us fresh and ready to go the next morning. We reluctantly loaded up and headed down the long road towards civilization. We were sitting at the stop sign where the dirt meets pavement when we heard the truck and trailer coming down the road making a ton o' noise. Eric said it sounded like wheel bearings. We pulled out behind him but kept a good distance. Good thing...
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We helped as much as we could, then wished him luck and headed home. Funny that our trip started and ended with a wheel lying in the road.

I wanted to go somewhere new this year, but we ended up in our same camp spot and riding some of the same areas. I feel a little silly now about all the complaining I did before we left. I'm fortunate that I got to see all the new things that had been left undiscovered for me on all those previous trips. I hope you all enjoyed them as much as I did. Thanks for coming along!




WoodsChick
 
So, on to the ride report...Sorry for the delay!

We left the calm peacefulness of the meadow and headed back to base camp. It was important to me to be there before nightfall, which is always a rare occurrence. Why so important, you ask? Well, I wanted to see the rare celestial show in the early evening sky. There was to be a triple conjunction with Venus, the 3rd brightest celestial body in the sky (only behind the sun and moon) next to Jupiter, 4th brightest, and seldom-seen Mercury rounding out the show. They were to be within 3 degrees of each other! It hadn't happened in 2 years and wouldn't happen again til late 2015. We ate a quick dinner and jumped in the hot springs to await the celestial show. At first it wasn't very bright, but the 3 planets were the first things to show up in the early evening sky. Mercury on the upper right, Jupiter to the left, Venus on the lower right...
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As the evening wore on it only got more spectacular. We were blessed with clear skies, which was great since we'd been under clouds and rain all day.
Just before the trio dipped below the horizon I spied Saturn in the eastern sky!
Pretty cool that I was able to see 4 of the 5 visible plantets in one evening with my naked eye. Aren't they beautiful?
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We were pretty beat from the long day but were reluctant to hit the sack and close out such a beautiful night. We toasted the stars with a bottle of wine and made the most of the special night.





It wasn't long before the sun was rising again, beckoning us to to hit the trail once again. It would be our last day and we were ready...
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It was Memorial Day and I wanted to pay my respects to our downed pilots.
It was raining but it was no big deal as we only had ourselves to worry about...
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Our road can be seen heading up the hill through the spring...
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We left the bottle at the plaque after toasting them...
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And after fixing their flags...
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And then we hit the road...
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...made the rainy ride back to camp totally worth it. Not long after returning to camp, though, the sun came out and it turned into a fantastic day.
We took full advantage of it by taking my Husky TR650 Terra out for some exploring....
I've been staring at this report for a long time until I noticed this part.

Thought Eric had a helmet camera! :lol:

Great report as usual. :applause:
 
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