Gophers and Cheese

This past Sunday I took the 883 out for more off-road adventures.  This time I brought my GoPro and a tripod.  I set the tripod up in various locations and took video of me riding past it.  Of course, I took a lot of photos with my phone too. Here's a long-distance selfie taken with my GoPro: The sky was covered in a thick blanket of fast moving clouds that made for an ominous backdrop. However, the sun did peek through every once in while. This road made for some good photos because of the vanishing point.  It was sandy and quite slippery in some sections. As I mentioned, I took quite a bit of video.  Here are a few stills from the forest section: However, the most fun I had was in this part where there was standing water from the rain showers on Saturday.  I started cautiously just riding through the edge of the puddles before taking a chance closer to the middle. It was cold, wet, and very dirty but I was grinning ...

Ever since Moto Mania (yes, a huge write up and many photos are coming soon...), I have been wanting to get my 883 out on more gravel and dirt roads to go adventure riding.  The trick has been finding places to ride near the Twin Cities but thanks to some recommendations and gravelmap.com , I found some good spots over the last two weekends.  If you have additional recommendations, please send them to me!!! The first place I found was the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area near Ham Lake and East Bethel, MN.  I visited the park two weeks ago and it was beautiful!  While I know snowmobiles and ATVs are clearly banned, I didn't see any reason I couldn't ride a motorcycle through it so I did. After that experience, I wanted more and planned a full day down in the Red Wing, MN area this past Friday.  Here are a few sunrise photos along the St. Croix Trail between I-94 and Prescott (which is now freshly re-paved by the way - go check it out)....