I had a chance to go to Phoenix recently on business and mixed some 2 wheeled fun in with it. A national committee I am on held its fall meeting there and one of our members lives in Phoenix. After a few emails and phone calls it was established that Jerry would indeed like to go riding on Saturday and Sunday but he was not a "dirt guy" but preferred the open roads on his two BMW GS's. A little coaxing on my part and emailing of pics and maps and he was convinced to try some "fire roading" in the surrounding national forest. He was so convinced that he went out and bought a KTM 990 Adventure. My ride turned out to be a rented Suzuki DRZ400 motard from AZ Sportbike Rental complete with motard tires.

Enough of the boring stuff....here's a bunch of pics....some are from my point and shoot but most are screen shots from my GoPro HD helmet cam. I have about 8 to 10 hours of HD video to sift through when I get a fast computer to edit with.

The "dirt part" was north of Phoenix in Prescott National Forest. We did a large loop of about 70 miles on dirt (140+ total on Saturday). Turned off I-17 at the Bumble Bee, AZ exit and headed off into the cactii toward Crown King on CR59 & Crown King Rd.

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Elevation profile for the trip:
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Up at the crack of dawn to load my gear at the hotel into the rental jeep...
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Weapons of choice - the BIG "990" & the little DRZ
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Jerry rearing to go
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(Sunday's treat...more on that later)
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Dirt at last after 30 minutes on I-17 on the 'lil 400 :-(
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.....and lots and lots of cactii(sic?)
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heading into the big town of Cleator, AZ
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pretty much a "one bar" town (and one business town)
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Last beer until Crown King (another 20 miles up the road)...
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nice wide open roads at this point but riddled with some nasty washboards and really slippery dust
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one of several switch backs on Crown King Road as we begin our climb to gain elevations
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helmetcam pic from the switchback
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the mighty duo taking a rest stop
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The mighty Suzuki (more on pros & cons later)....check out those tires :-)
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Jerry chomping at the bit to hit the dusty trail (I got to lead so he had to eat my dust)
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OK....I need to post this up before I loose it...got a bunch more pics that I'll keep adding to the thread.

 

onward to Crown King..

a shot of Kmac beside the DRZ
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a lot of cuts to ride through on the climb up to Crown King
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just plain gorgeous panoramic view everywhere....I always thought AZ was desert & cactii
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launching rail ..... nose up at 88 mph and look out for the clock (Back to the Future!)
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last cut through before Crown King...pass thru this and the whole scene changes from high desert to evergreen forest
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Crown King at last after 26 mile and 1-1/2 hrs...
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gang's all here
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can you find the big 990?
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after we topped off our gas tanks with $4.75/gal gas (cheap at any price if you can't get it) we headed south west to pickup Senator Road
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side trail at the intersection....not exactly what the DRZ was made for as I was to soon find out
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BIG BIKE for a BIG GUY...and he made it look so easy...I think he stood up once the whole trip
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self portrait...I get one of these every time I turn the camera on or off
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now the going gets tougher....sure do miss the 'lil KLX...the DRZ had gobs of low end torque and a nice bark to the exhaust but those big motard tires, no *****, and a way too stiff suspension made for a very ruff ride for the next 20+ miles
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I quickly learned to slow down and sneak around the tight turns for self preservation from a head on with the kamakazee 4 wheel species
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a few quads out and about...these guys were coming up the back way from Lake Pleasant to Crown King on some really tuff trails
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cattle guards were everywhere...
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nice stretch of road through the forest...
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cobble stone road/trail
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dry creek crossing the road/trail (by the way, this is still Senator Rd and it shows up on lots of road maps!)
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Ok....I'm gonna take a breather and post this up.

 

Yee Haw...WATER...:-)...now I can relate to this
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jet skiing with the Big 990...
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my turn
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riding through the trees is almost like North Carolina...well not exactly
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Saturday afternoon stacking and backing on the Senator (move over buddy and give me a little breathing room)
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bunch of nice bermed turns....unfortunately the ball bearing rocks, teflon sand, and big motard tires did not let me have the fun I would have like to
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WFO into the wild blue yonder...
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a white kamakazee UTV....he was booking around the turn when he finally saw me and jerked hard to his left to miss me
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one finger - one rider behind me; two fingers - two riders behind me....
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lunch break
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I got a charge out of seeing road signs in the middle of nowhere
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water, water, everywhere...
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last of the signs..
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Neat stuff 25 years ago I lived out there and your stuff brings back some good memories.

 

...don't get too close to the edge....it's a long way down
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seeing open road like this just makes you want to twist that throttle back as far as it will go and let her rip....
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back down out of the hills onto some relatively smooth dirt and headed into the town of Mayer
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Right off of I-17 at Bumble Bee there is about a mile or so of beautiful twisted pavement that heads out to CR59. I didn't have my helmet cam on when we started but on the way back I shot some motard action on the tarmac....this is what the DRZ was made for :-)
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After all you can eat ribs for dinner, a bunch of Advil, and a good nights sleep at the Dreary Inn, I was ready to go again. This time Jerry very graciously offered to let me ride his BMW GS1150 while we cruised to some of the local lakes, Bartlett Lake and Lake Pleasant.
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I took a few poetic liberties with the next couple of pics...I kinda like the effects

Poster art
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BMW B&W
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and FINALLY....a series I'll call "lean on me" ....thanks Jerry :-)
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STAY TUNED FOR THE VIDEO VERSION (as soon as I get my new PC)

 

excellent pics...looks like a great place to ride.

 

Great stuff!!!!!!!!!!! Always love the ride reports. Definitely looks like some good terrain for the KLX out there. That DRZ would have done well there too if it weren't in the motard gear. I also have to say, it looks like you could eat off of Jerry's garage floor
Thanks for taking the time to put the report up.
Dan

 

Nice shots! Agreed, lots of people don't realize the varied terrain here - 0 to 12,000 feet. A good section of your road to Crown King was originally a railroad grade, which explains those narrow cuts through the rocks that you scored some great pictures of.

Do you have a post elsewhere about that camera? I'd like to learn more.

VERY cool that your buddy was so prepared for you two to have a couple of nice rides. Looks like you had a great time!

 

Wow that ride report has all the true marks of a real ADV ride! It looked like you guys were in the Baja 1000!!! Nice report man.

 

Thanks for the kudos.....I hadn't been on a good ride in way too long....so this was just what the doctor ordered.

The video camera is one of the new GoPro Hero HD cameras. It will shoot true HD video in several different flavors, 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 960, 7 something x something, etc, etc. The 1920 is for big wide horizontal vids with lots of pixels. The video for this trip was shot at 1280 x 960. It gives you wide angle horizontal with some fish eye but gives you more top to bottom so you can see the front of the bike. Plus it doesn't take quite as much memory. I have two 16 Gbyte SD cards and two GoPro rechargeable batteries. At 1280 x 960 I can get about 2 to 2.5 hrs of video on a card and one battery. Works out pretty good.

The videos are so large that my current computer can't edit them and play back is jerky. I browsed thru the video to a frame I liked then did a screen shot. The camera can also do 5 megapixel snapshots at intervals (5 sec, 10 sec, etc) until you stop it or it fills up the card. I haven't tried that yet. Also has a lower resolution with 60 fps to give nice slow motion or better fast action. If you play back straight to a HD TV be prepared for some jaw dropping video. It's that good.