• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Sunshine And Solitude In The Desert: Thanksgiving 2012

I know we have a lot of good riding down here too. I used to like to go from Red Mountain to the old Charles Manson cabin. That is, before someone burned it down. I just like the nostalgia of the Pony Express Trails. That old stone building made my heart jump a beat...VERY COOL!
 
Ok...where were we? Oh, yeah...sunrise. Right.



So as soon as it warmed up enough to ride we headed up into the canyon across the valley. The creek wasn't frozen, but we weren't really in the canyon yet. I did NOT want to get my feet wet at the beginning of a long day...
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Heading into the canyon...
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It's always much cooler in this canyon, even in the warmer months, so it was no surprise that the creek was frozen pretty good on the edges. We crossed this thing maybe 7 times...
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And yes, that's a 2.5gal gas can on the back of my bike. We had a big day planned...
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Cool little clearing at the end of the canyon before we start climbing up into the mountains. This is beautiful in late spring...
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Just a spectacular day in the mountains. We were the only people on earth, I think...
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Eric on the far side...
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Speakin' of Eric, I gotta go pick him up. More in a little while!
 
Least amount of snow I've ever seen here in the end of November. Good for us, though, as we had no limitations on where we could go!
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We dropped down out of the mountains and headed north through yet another valley...
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Pretty desolate area out here...just the way we like it!
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Oops! Gotta go! More later...




WoodsChick
 
I'll trade you my work week for your adventure. I'll even throw in a vanpool, two small dogs and a view of the Hotel Del Coronado.
 
Awesome ! Thanks for sharing !

Sure! The pleasure was all mine, Russ!

7 Deadly Zins...a fantastic choice. One of my favorite wines with a good steak.

Ahh...an astute ride report reader! :thumbsup: One of my favorites. It's pretty muscular...feels like it's eating the enamel off my teeth! :love:

Yup...I pretty much hate you guys.:notworthy: (Totally jealous.)

Great pics of what looks like a wonderful ride, thanks for sharing. Maybe someday....

:) Hee-hee! Thanks, Jeremy!
Get on out there and do it as soon as you can...time waits for no man and you only have so many heartbeats. Don't waste them!
 
Guys, way epic!!! Thanks for posting the pics for the rest of us working stiffs.

You're very welcome! Glad I could help :D

I know we have a lot of good riding down here too. I used to like to go from Red Mountain to the old Charles Manson cabin. That is, before someone burned it down. I just like the nostalgia of the Pony Express Trails. That old stone building made my heart jump a beat...VERY COOL!

Ooh! If you like old stone buildings then Nevada is your state of choice. They're everywhere!
 
I'll trade you my work week for your adventure. I'll even throw in a vanpool, two small dogs and a view of the Hotel Del Coronado.

Wow...really? A Vanpool, too?? Man...you make that sound really attractive! Thanks, Coastie! Let me get back to you on that, m'kay?


Holly smokes WC!! Nice license plate! I never noticed before, but that is cool!

Dude...seriously?? You never noticed it? I try to feature it somewhat prominently, in a discreet manner of course, in all my ride reports. Gee...you must not be reading all my reports...:naughty: Gotta represent the most happenin' place around, ya know? :thumbsup:
 
WARNING ANIMAL LOVERS: GRUESOME PHOTO TO FOLLOW!
Scroll way down with your eyes closed if you don't want to see it.

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We'd seen a few coyotes on this trip and they all looked pretty healthy and well-fed. The ranchers must be getting fed up with losing their livestock because we ran across these 3 coyotes that paid the ultimate price for their meals...

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This ranch had seen better days, although the spring out in the canyon behind the remains of this building was still flowing quite nicely...
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Even the "new" wing of the ranch was looking a little unloved...
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Crazy clouds!
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We arrived at our destination, an unnamed spring in a valley far to the north.
I was absolutely appalled at what we found :eek:
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The lovely folks that trashed this place were thoughtful enough to leave behind their 4 (four!) empty 30-pack beer boxes so we filled them all up, and then some, with cans, bottles, cigarette butts, bottle caps, underwear, socks and other bits of detritus. We crushed the cans and still didn't have enough room in those 4 boxes for all the crap that got left behind. I was absolutely livid. It was hard for me to relax there, even after cleaning the place up, because I was so angry. The sad part is it was probably locals doing it. Sons-a-bishes don't know how good they've got it out there. I won't be surprised if we show up someday and get greeted with "No Trespassing" signs instead of an idyllic spring in a very isolated part of one of the most sparsely-populated states in the country. Grrr! Anyway, this is what it looked like when we got done with it...
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The pile of other people's crap that we very reluctantly had to leave behind. I even sifted through the fire pit and cleaned it out, too...
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We had planned on taking some new trails back to camp but the short days of late fall had us revising that thought. The temps would drop precipitously with the sun and if one should have a problem out there...mechanical, physical, etc...things could get ugly pretty quick. We're always prepared to survive a long, cold night out no matter where we are, but it's hard to take that chance when there's a hot springs waiting for us back at camp. We bombed back on regular roads as quickly as possible, passing above the bustling metropolis of Austin just as it was getting dark...
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It was pretty much dark when we arrived at camp...
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As this was the last ride of our trip, we saluted all that is wonderful about Nevada with an appropriate beverage...
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Wrapping this up in a few...
 
Eric and I soaked the night away, just the two of us and our bottle of Wild Horse pinot noir, and seriously wished we had another week or so to ride and explore. It's just really never enough time out there, you know? We could probably spend the rest of our riding years out in the wide open spaces of Nevada and still not see it all. I fully intend to try, though!

After watching the stars fade into dawn and greeting the sun once more, we loaded up and prepared to re-enter the real world. The morning was super cold and I had to wait for the ambient temperature to rise before I could get a decent photo of the resident lucky goldfish...
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I was glad to not miss this beauty on the way home. There's an old pony express station in front of the dune but it keeps getting covered up by the shifting sands...
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Speaking of remaining riding years, when it's all over for me I hope I can spend the rest of eternity in some of my favorite places. I hope that's what's happening for this person...
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Well, that's all I got, folks. I hope y'all enjoyed coming along with us on our annual Thanksgiving Adventure. Stay tuned next November for another installment :thumbup




WoodsChick
 
wow ...you look like you are all over the seat and feet off the pegs on this one ...


I was on the verge of falling off but stayed on the throttle til I got to level ground...
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wow ...you look like you are all over the seat and feet off the pegs on this one ...

Yeah, I was. The bike is still pretty tall for me, even though most of the time it doesn't really look like it. I started to fall off as I was transitioning from the rocks to the uphill (which never ever look steep in photos) and I'd already fallen over once and didn't particularly feel like doing it again so I just kept it rolling till I got up top and could get it on level ground. I found a nice big rock to put my foot on and all was good :)
 
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