In early September of 2008, Gary booked a wedding in Marathon Texas. Marathon is about 40 miles north of the Persimmon Gap entrance station to Big Bend National Park. It is a very small town, and mostly consists of individuals of a more artistic laid back nature. I went with Gary on this venture to assist in the photography and to take advantage of some riding opportunities that would present themselves during the 5-day sojourn. I won’t get into too much detail about the wedding, only to say that the bride, groom, and their friends and family were genuinely really good people. They included us in everything as friends more than photographers shooting the wedding activities. To give a timeline reference, the night we arrived, we had dinner outside the White Buffalo bar at the Gage Hotel while patrons of the rustic tavern listened to Sarah Palin’s Hockey Mom / Pitt Bull with lipstick GOP Vice Presidential acceptance speech. In a town full of artists, it was interesting to hear the whoops coming from what appeared to be a predominately conservative audience.
We trailered the bikes to Marathon as we needed to bring a lot of camera equipment and it made more sense than trying to pack all of the equipment along with everything else onto the bikes. However there was plenty of riding to be had. The distance between Marathon and the park headquarters at Panther Junction is 70 miles. While the road out of Marathon is fairly straight and flat, it quickly starts twisting and turning its way through the hills not to long afterward. The first ride we made to the park was the in the cool clean morning the day after we arrived. After we had stopped by the park headquarters, gassed up, got some snacks and drinks, we headed west towards Castolon.
The River Road
The river road takes off of the main road about 5 miles prior to arrival in Castolon. And that was our destination for the day. The 51 miles of the river road more or less follow the Rio Grande. I have driven this road several times, but until now had never ridden it on a motorcycle. If I were to write a travel guide for motorcycles, I would only have 5 words to say – The River Road Is Fun…. This unbeaten path of Chihuahuan desert is a great ride on a dual-sport bike; there is just the right mix of sand and rock. As soon as we would get to a spot where the sand would get the back tire of the bike fishtailing, it would become rocky and manageable again. Never did we get to a point where there were massive amounts of beach to cross. Just enough to let you know it was there and keep you on your toes. The scenery was unprecedented, it was getting towards the end of the rainy season in Big Bend, and the desert was in full bloom. The western part of the river road is the more difficult part, and that’s the part of the road we were staring from. Living up to that reputation, there were even several water crossings we had to contend with. One particularly long stretch of submerged washed out road we crossed was more or less the beginning of yet another adventure/ordeal on yet another trip to Big Bend National Park. We had just made our way through this obstacle and the road smoothed out. I was riding fast; the bike was performing great, small jumps, a little air, controllable terrain, and great scenery. Everything was perfect, and I was enjoying it to the full extent a 450 lb 650cc bike on aired down Michelin Anakee tires would allow. After a mile or two something changed however, the back end began to feel mushy, at first I just thought it was the terrain, however after a few seconds, I realized there was something wrong. I pulled the bike to a stop on a flat level part of the road right after a small hill. As I was stopping the bike the vision of a dead tire sloshing its way around beneath me was running through my head. When inspected, sure enough – Flat Tire. Damn-it. That was the last thing I wanted or needed, to be changing a tire out in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert. Sometimes things are what they are, no matter how hard you want them not to be, and for me that thing was a flat tire. As I got the bike up on the center stand, Gary approached from the direction that I had just come. He said that he had seen me stop, and was wondering why I did so and got off the bike. As he rode up the hill to where the road flattened out, he saw me putting the bike on the center stand and figured we would be spending the next few minutes repairing a flat. The next action, I have to claim sheer stupidity, sheer laziness, and a sheer case of not thinking. I’m not sure why… but for some stupid reason I thought filling the tire with a can of fix-a-flat might do the trick and get me back on my way. This method had got me a hundred miles home once in the past, before I started carrying tire irons. But this time it was a big mistake. The fix-a-flat did nothing to patch the hole in the tube, and all it ended up doing was making an easy job a big pain in the ass that took much longer than it should have. In the end getting the bead broken and the old tube out was a piece of cake with two people, the problem was all of the fluid that had leaked out of the busted tube, into the tire… I spent probably 30 minutes just trying to clean all the gray, milky, sticky crap out of the tire and rim. I had to get it out so that the new tube did not bind, pinch, and rupture when inflated. To add to the experience the painstaking task was achieve under the hot desert sun. Another stupid act on our part was to leave the manual tire pump back at camp. I had a C02 tire inflator, but the cartridges did not exactly fit. It took all 4 cartridges to get the tire partially inflated and the tire never set the bead completely against the rim. However, as we pretty much had no other alternatives, I would have to ride it as it was. At this point we had made our way about 15 miles down the road. We were just getting to the old Johnson Ranch airfield that served as a USAF station in the early 1900’s. As we would have another 35 miles to cross if we continued east, we decided the best course of action was to turn around and head back towards Castolon. Amazingly enough, the bike performed exceptionally well on a half inflated, un-beaded tire. Once I got to the point of realizing the tire was going to be okay, I started riding a little harder again and the bike was performing great. I knew that deflating the tires a bit helped off-road traction, but I had never deflated below about 28 lbs, as it were, I was running the rear tire at 15 lbs and it was doing great. You probably would not want to be crossing any rugged rocky terrain like this, but it was great for the road we were on.
Once we got back to the paved road, we headed west about 5 miles into Castolon. Castolon was an old army fort and barracks built back at the turn of the century when the US was having boarder issues with our neighbors to the south. It has been restored and today acts as a visitor center and store. We almost always make our way to Castolon on our trips to the Park. One of the things we were happy to see was that there is now cell phone service in Castolon. We called the motorcyclist best friend in the Big Bend country, Ralph at Cycletek. We told him of our situation and he agreed to meet us in Terlingua with a new set of tubes and a portable electric pump. About ½ hour later we were talking to Ralph, and a fresh set of tubes for both bikes, along with a Slime compact air compressor joined the other tools in my Jesse Luggage.
We did not need to be back at the Gage for a few more hours, so we decided to head up 118 toward Alpine. As we were blasting our way north on hwy 118, we had just passed the VFW post when Gary stopped, turned around, and headed back. We pulled into the parking lot of the VFW; walked inside and ordered up a couple of ice cold Tecate’s. After a hard day of riding on and off road, the cerveza’s hit the spot just perfectly. We chatted to the veterans at the VFW for a while and then mounted our bikes and continued on towards Alpine. Hwy 170 is probably the most scenic ride in the area, if not the state, however 118 holds it own - especially as you start approaching Alpine from the south. Rolling hills, winding roads, beautiful geological formations, it pretty much has it all, plus when riding the roads of southwest Texas’ Big Bend country, there is rarely any other vehicles to contend with. We arrived in Alpine and headed east back towards Marathon. We arrived back at the Gage hotel with just enough time to clean up, take a shower and get ready for dinner with the wedding party. There was an activity scheduled for the next morning, that we were invited so. It sounded like a fun time, and something fun to photograph. With the morning and evening activities set, we knew we would have a few hours set aside for riding the next day.
The Stillwell Ranch and La Linda
After photographing the morning event, we had some time before the rehearsal dinner that evening in Alpine. We decided that we wanted to ride to the old La Linda Bridge. A quick jaunt down 385 took us to FM 2627 right before the entrance to the park. Upon heading east on 2627, we entered the Black Gap Wildlife Management area. Like everything in this county, it was a spectacularly scenic desert ride. One of the things that really surprised me was how the road following the contour of the earth, undulated beneath the rubber side of the bike. The road is not traveled very often and you had to watch for build up of sand along the sides of the road in the low spots. However there was nothing to keep you from enjoying the road at a high rate of speed. About 6 miles east of the turn off from 385 is the Stillwell Store. The Stillwell’s owned a very large Ranch in this part of the country a little after the turn of the century. Hallie Stillwell was the patriarch from the age of 19 until she passed away in 1997 at the age of 99. She was a Texas Legend. If you can remember Barbara Stanwyck in a 60’s-70’s TV show called The Big Valley (I think that is what it was called), the show portrayed here as a rugged rancher woman, well Hallie was the real thing and old Babs would look like a scared little school girl in comparison. The store is mostly a stop for people visiting the Stillwell Ranch, but the also have a museum dedicated to Hallie’s 100 years in this county. We did not have time to tour the museum, but did have some time to sit and talk to Hallie’s granddaughter, and it was some interesting conversing. After a snack and drink at the store, we headed on towards the La Linda Bridge. I can’t say that there was much to see at the crossing that was shut down in 1997, but you can look across into La Linda Mexico. I don’t know if they still mine fluorspar there, but it looked as if the town was still somewhat active. After spending a short time at the bridge, we headed back to the hotel. Upon arriving back at the hotel, we figured what time we left, returned and the number of miles we clicked off. We calculated our average speed and determined that it was a “Fast Ride”. We had enough time to get cleaned up and make it to the Reata Restaurant in Alpine early enough to photograph the wedding party as they arrived.
Old Ore Road
Saturday was the wedding, so there were no motorcycle adventures, however Sunday would host another dual-sport ride. As the wedding ran pretty late, we did not get an early start on Sunday. After breakfast, we made our way back to the park. A few miles after the park entrance the Dagger Flat road takes you east towards Dagger Flats, before you get there, Old Ore Road winds its way for 26.4 miles south. Zinc and Silver Ore, used to be mined in this area in the early 1900’s, and Old Ore Road is what was used to move the ore from Boquillas Canyon to the Railroad in Marathon. You would not recognize this today as the vast majority of it was paved over to become Hwy 385. However this portion of the road as remained. For the most part is has been un-maintained for almost 100 years now. This is a great road whether driving it in a 4x4, or riding it on a motorcycle. I have driven every back country road in Big Bend National Park, and have driven portions of Old Ore, but never from start to finish so this would be a first time experience for me. All of the back country roads in Big Bend give you access to parts of the park over 90% of the visitor never see, and if you want to see the real Big Bend, it is these roads you have to venture forth on. The vistas are spectacular from just about any of the roads, any time you are on them. However taking one of them for the first time is probably the best time of all. The riding was fairly technical, at least for me. A lot of rocks, hill climbs, descents, ruts, sand and mud. And it was electrifying. As falling is a part of off-road riding, I took full advantage of the opportunity. The first time was the classic, try to pass Gary in the sand and bust my ass. It seems that almost every time I pass Gary off road that happens… (or I get a flat…). But it was fun and I got up laughing about it. The terrain was widely varying, there were parts of the road you could ride really fast, and other parts you had to take really slow. As we approached parts of the road we would find interesting, we would stop and check them out for a bit. At one point on a rocky hill climb, Gary’s rear tire slipped out from under him, and down he went with a thump. Gary was unhurt, but there was a little damage to the bike, nothing to keep him from riding safely, just a broken peg. A few miles later it was my turn again. It was a rutted out hill climb, I was down in the rut and decided I needed to get out of it and apparently gave it too much throttle. To my surprise, the bike JUMPED out of the rut and launched itself right into and almost over the embankment on the side of the road. The Jesse luggage took the brunt of the impact and the bike and luggage came out completely undamaged. I gotta say, that is some tough luggage. As we made our way to around 20 miles from the northern part of the road, it became a little smoother and – to be honest, more boring. I had been on this part of the road several times before on the way to Ernst Tinaja, and perhaps that familiarity in comparison to the virgin territory we had just crossed made it seem more boring. However it was a good finish to the off-road portion of the ride. We hit the pavement where Old Ore joins the park road a few miles west of Rio Grande Village. We road west into an afternoon sky of painted clouds and silhouetted mountains. A reward for our hard earned journey down Old Ore Road. Black Gap Road used to be my favorite backcountry road in Big Bend, I think it has now been replaced by Old Ore. While not as scenic, it was certainly more fun to ride. We are planning to ride this road again the next time we are down there.
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