“Sand, silt, gravel and dust…welcome to Oklahoma”

We got a great night sleep at the Springhill Suites in Bartlesville last night. I think that tasty Mexican dinner and a couple Pacifico’s had something to do with it! Rod said meet up at 7am in the lobby and we got loaded up and headed out. Today was a TOTALLY new experience. The first couple hours went through a WMA that had some cool lakes and creeks and trees. Crossed several really old steel trestle bridges and really enjoyed the morning. We made over a 100 miles by lunch and set our sights on Alva Oklahoma for night. As fate would have it, we hit some really tough parts in the afternoon.

The good news is that the rain from days ago settled the dust a little, made the temps cooler and it also had been long enough that the mud had dried up. But the negative effect is the DEEP silt and sand that has washed into the dirt roads. We’re flying along between 50 – 60 mph and all of a sudden your front tire just completely washes out and the rear end wants to pass you! It’s a really “white knuckle” situation a

nd we dealt with it for about 5 hours of non-stop riding. We both nearly had crashes multiple times, but the KTM’s pulled us through. The other close call was a truck FLYING down our road coming up the other side of the hill we’re cresting and he’s RIGHT on the middle of the road!! He barely sees me in time to swerve and miss me. I was a split second from ditching it had he not moved.

After several times telling ourselves the town was just “15 minutes” away, we FINALLY saw it in the distance. THANK GOD!! Absolutely nowhere to camp, primitive or otherwise, so Super 8 it is! Brand new hotel so it’s pretty nice. We’re so tired we elected to pass on dinner and hit the bed. Tomorrow is going to be a BRUTAL day, so we’re leaving at 6:30am. The first town is 88 miles away, no problem. But it’ll be too early to stop and the next stop is 150 miles from there with ZERO towns (gas or food) in-between. That’ll be over 230 miles in a day! May not seem like a lot, but doing it in dirt is a different story. Stay tuned and see how it turns out!

Cheers

Bradley