Death Valley Ride Report 29 APR - 03 MAY 2009

PandaNin

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We took the bi-annual trip to Death Valley, CA, over this past weekend. If you have not been, you need to go. It's a surreal experience.

The roads to get there from NorCal are absolutely amazing. Kern Canyon is now my favorite road in the country. It makes the Tail of the Dragon look like main street on Sunday morning. The canyon has some beautiful technical curves and at the end, multiple 128mph sweepers (If I had actually done this my GPS would attest to it, but since my GPS says 0.00 I can neither confirm nor deny).

I wish I could of gotten a picture of a sign but we were just having too much fun so I have to describe it. You know those yellow warning signs that say 'curvy roads ahead next 5 miles'? This sign said, "curvy roads ahead next 48 miles". Nirvana. Not one interstate was used in this trip.

Here's a pic of us on arrival
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The view from Dante's View
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Of course I had to take a few beauty shots of the Beast while I was in the desert. These were taken at the sand dunes.

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Of our group of 21 bikes, no tickets and no accidents. Two harleys went down and were airlifted out of the Canyon Saturday. I heard they would be OK, no gear so lots of scrapes. I wish them a fast recovery.

This is the straightest road in the desert. It's where everyone does top-speed runs.
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Zoomed up just a bit for detail
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It took me 10.5 hours to get home Sunday. My butt hurt so bad from the stock seat. It was an awesome four days and my new tires now have zero chicken strips and 1,300 miles of extreme twisties and super-fast straights on them.

If you want to see all the pics I posted them on my domain: http://www.donbarnwell.com
 
Cool pics, glad you and almost everyone had a good time. There is a Death Valley ride scheduled for this Saturday, it is supposed to cover 500 miles round trip!:thumbsup:
 
From Vegas it's only 120 miles away! You should get out there and enjoy the scenery before it gets too hot.
 
Awesome pics!! What kind of camera did you use?
 
thanks for sharing the pics...that is one of the places i want to see in person one of these days :beerchug:
 
I'd love to take my Busa somewhere like that. One of these days...

Maybe I'll take my Gen III out there in about 10 years. :whistle:
 
sounds like a good time, thanks for the pics
 
Ohhh...that's AWESOME!

Kern River and Kern Valley are awesome, amazing, spectacular!!!

Congrats on a great trip... Wish I'd been there... :beerchug:

Thanks for the share!!
 
Temperature was unusually cool. It was only a high of 94 F while we were there.

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On Friday it was very cool because of the storms blowing across. Winds were gusting up to 50mph and keeping the bike upright became a challenge in the low-lying areas. Saturday was much much nicer.
 
Here's a sign similar to the one you mentioned.

Thanks for the pics, sounds like a great ride.


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For those using firefox the link works now. Sorry about that.

Link for all pics

And yes! a sign just like that, only 100 miles shorter. I don't think I could have gone another 100 miles. After 48 miles of left/right/left/right/left the busa does get a little heavy.
 
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