Rough Road Video, Raspberries and a Water Crossing Repair In the Forest

Wednesday October 26, 2022 Guerneville CA.

New Video

I took a few video clips of the Battle Creek Road in one of the roughest spots. It’s a short one but shows just what we took the vans through on the recent trip.

https://youtu.be/o1ABC0uYwgM

Fresh Raspberries

My neighbor picked herself a bunch of raspberries the other day. The birds got the first crop in the spring but now they are leaving them alone.raspberries

 

Quad runner air

I was checking the air in the quad tires when I found that I’d installed them backwards the last time I changed the tires and the air valves were on the back so I had to remove the wheels and turn them around. While doing that I lost one of the lug nuts and looked an looked for it as it should be on the ground where the others were, but no go, even though I looked several times. I put it back together without it as three would hold it instead of four until I found the lost nut which I figured I would eventually. As it was I was going outside at night with a light and went I went by the place .the nut caught the light and I found it right where it should have been. quad1

 

Forest work

I rode the quad runner up into the hills as I wanted to bring the trail tools home after the work and it’s too hard to take them on the dirt bike.

On the way I spiced this mushroom on the road. It’s from the Amanita family and is the only one we pick in the family because it is edible and very good.
A lot of the others in the family are highly poisonous. This one is about five inches across the top.mushroom3

 

I continued riding on up this road to the work area, about a mile up the hill.road4

 

Too narrow

When I built this rock dam the other day I made it too narrow and sharp to get the quad runner across, so I needed to fix that mistake. by widening the trail out.crossing5

 

I decided to fix all the erosion in this water crossing and moved the rock dam quite a bit which meant I had to move all the rocks to the new spot. I though them all down to the new spot and began to construct the new rock dam.rocks7

 

I need to fill the area in front of the dam with gravel  which was plentiful on the trail, I just had to shovel it into the spot.dam9

 

I got it this far and decided to finish the whole thing off by filling the whole ditch in.ditch10

 

I shoveled enough rock into the ditch to fill it up and repair all the erosion so now it looks good and should do the job and I loaded my tools up and headed for home.ditch13

 

Main road repair

I stopped here on the main road and put a small ditch across the road so the water can drain off the road instead of washing a ditch down the road when it rains hard.drain14

 

I rode on down this road.road15

 

And stopped at this water crossing where I had constructed another rock dam to repair this crossing. Looks good, just needs some hard rains to fill in the ditch.dam16

Nice day.

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Dirt Bike Ride, Broken Clutch Lever and a Big Mushroom

Tuesday October 25, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Dirt bike ride day

Barry showed up in my yard this morning with his dirt bike. He’s been reading my blog and knew I had the trail made so we could ride on up that road to see what’s up there.

We got ready to go and took off across the highway and on up into the forest.bikes1

 

We stopped often to cut small limbs out of the road, the ones that smack you in the face, mostly.brush2

 

Barry is a surveyor, so we stopped here so he could figure out where a property line was.barry3

 

Eventually we ended up at our break area on the hilltop. Barry is headed to his hammock.break4

 

View

There were a few clouds in the sky today, maybe some rain coming soon.view5

 

After a good break we headed for the area where I was working on the trail. Barry is checking it out and mostly gave his approval.trail6

 

We walked up the trail a bit throwing rocks and sticks off the trail.road7

 

Back on the dirt bikes we rode on up the hill.rideon8

 

Stopping to trim brush off the road.cutting9

 

Barry stopped here to get this larger stuff off the road and I got off too to  help him clear it. We smelled gas and eventually realized Barry’s bike fell over and the gas was draining out.cluch10

 

Broken clutch lever

When Barry picked up his bike he said there was something wrong with his clutch lever as it was a bit loose, but it worked so we rode on up the hill further. We were going up a steep part when Barry informed me his clutch lever was broken, so we had a problem.

We were able to get the bike turned around and down to a flat in the road to have a look at it. Broken alright, so no clutch. I looked at it and was able to tighten up the clutch cable so he could at least use it to get the engine started so we were able to start down the hill headed for home.trail12

 

Big mushroom

On the way Barry headed off in another direction. I knew he was headed on over to where we found a nice big edible mushroom earlier. We stashed it by the road as we knew it wouldn’t last the ride and now needed to pick it up.

This is about six inches across and is the most sought after mushroom in these parts.mushroom13

 

He stuffed that mushroom in his jacket and we took off for home.stuffing14

 

I  had some plans to do some work, but the ride was enough to tire me out for the day.

Nice day.

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