A day on the trail (7-13-08)

Five new friends set out to check out some of western Louisiana's great country roads. These consist mostly of dirt roads and tracks through farm land and national forests.


We began by meeting in the McDonald's parking lot.

It took us all of 1.5 miles to get to the first bit of gravel.



This is Nicky's first dual sport ride. She has all of about 2 weeks worth of road riding experience. She did great, and enjoyed every minute of it. I applaud her for powering through the sand with a smile on her face.


We pulled up to a section of ruts, where, when wet, eats bikes whole.


We stopped and waited.... for a few minutes..... for Jim on his big BMW 1200 GS. I turned back to go check on him and sure enough the ruts got him sideways and brought down his beast. Even with his age, he was still able to hoist the bike up by himself.



Down the road is Spanish Lake, an interesting place... Back before the locks (dams) on the Red River and the construction of I-49, Spanish lake would flood yearly with the rise and fall of the Red River. This provides "some of the best soil in the state." You can't see it from any of my pics, but if you are ever on I-49, north of Natchitoches you will come to a flat plane with hills to your west and swamps on your right, this is all part of Old Spanish Lake. Now that I-49 has been built, farmers do not use the western side of the land. This is because they have to travel many miles to their land that was split by the interstate. The floods no longer come because the river levels never rise high enogh. Its become a bit of a worry that the soil is losing some of its nutrients...If you notice the hill, the edge of the lake can be followed for miles, surrounding the Red River Plain.


We took a quick rest stop. Here's Nicky's husband on his DR650.

This road is fast. Straight, smooth and fast. In this pic, I was doing about 70mph kickin up a dust storm.


It took a couple minutes for the gang to catch up, but here is Josh on his DRZ400 Super Moto.

The trail continued and got nice and sandy. Jim finally had enough, called it quits and headed back to easy gravel and pavement. He still only had a couple hundred miles to go before his first break in scheduled maintenance.