Good day, ADVrider inmates and visitors, and welcome to Photos of the Week. We start with a gorgeous Featured Photo by @KennyBooBear, who shot the 2007 Suzuki DRZ400 and 2018 Honda CRF450L making a splash a few weeks ago in California. He had gone out with the owners of those two bikes to “scout out some future group ride locations, primarily to see where snow levels were.” A Nikon Z5 mirrorless camera with a wide-open 50 mm lens did a nice job of capturing the scene.
All of these were taken between the small mining town of Washington, CA and North Bloomfield, CA. We took our sweet time this particular afternoon as the three of us casually meandered through a number of our favorite local forest roads and logging tracks.
KennyBooBear shot the following two pictures on the same trip.
And below, three more-recent shots from the same contributor. “Snapped these on Sunday when the urge to ride was too great. It was already late so instead of a day in the dirt, I opted to take a 172-mile loop through the Sierra Nevada up Highway 49, and then onto 89 toward Truckee before returning home.” KennyBooBear’s ride is a 2022 Aprilia Tuareg 660.
The snow levels for this time of year are absolutely incredible and have every stream, creek, and river moving at rates I’ve never witnessed in my 11 years living here. The picture on the forest road is just across from the Sierra Buttes. The one on the side of the road is halfway up Donner Pass from Donner Lake. Turn around and you see the lake in all of its stunning beauty.
Winter snows bring April goes
Here is another view of California, shot in April by Bcbigelow in the Alabama Hills east of Lone Pine. “Spring following a massive snow year.” That is a 2006 BMW HP2 Enduro, by the way.
A little farther south
The 2021 Honda CRF300L Rally in the photo below was ridden by @JeffK, who says there are “not many UK-based Honda CRF300s in the Salta Province of Argentina.” This was sometime last year, on a very long tour from Buenos Aires to Bogota, 12,000 kilometers, “all along and up the Andes.”
In Tennessee
Here is a shot by @Corsa~, taken very recently by the Ocoee River on the second day of a 1,700-mile tour from Fort Myers, Florida, through eastern Tennessee. That’s a 2021 BMW 1250 GS. Notice the flag at half-staff, likely because of a March 27 school shooting in Nashville.
Big lake in Manitoba
We who live near the Great Lakes tend to think nothing that’s full of fresh water is bigger, but one of the shots below of the 2004 Suzuki DL650 V-Strom ridden by @bempey in May reveals Lake Winnipeg in all its springtime glory. We are informed by Mr. Bempey that this body of water is in fact larger than either Lake Ontario or Lake Erie.
So, it was a nice day for a ride. The ice was off the creek down the street, and the last of the snow had melted. I headed north on gravel roads, explored some side-roads (one trail, featuring bull-rushes on both sides of path, just “disappeared” into the swamp, with barely enough land to turn the bike around).
I took Chalet Beach road to the end, which (not too surprisingly) dumped me onto Chalet Beach. This beach is on “the BIG lake” . . . Lake Winnipeg. It’s smaller than Superior, Michigan, and Huron, but larger (a lot larger) than Erie or Ontario. Just a month ago there were fishing shacks and pickup trucks on the ice that forms on the edges.
This day (May 14th) I was surprised to fnd ice on it, stretching out some ways from shore. But there were boats on the lake beyond the ice, indicating that some harbours (such as Gimli) were open already.
The V-Strom performed flawlessly, as usual. Riding on the dry, loose gravel of the farm roads was pretty sketchy over 60 kmh, but actually felt exactly the same up to 100 kmh and faster. The Michelins aren’t the ideal tool for the task, but they worked without complaint. When (if) I ever wear them out I’ll be putting some more aggressive rubber on, possibly Heideneau Scouts, like I had on my 2008 DL1000.
In Africa
Here is the 2014 BMW GS ridden by @Hammer in the Namibian Desert in 2015 during a southern Africa tour.
Have chestnuts, will travel
Below, a chestnut roaster with “what looks very much like a home-made trike” somewhere in Portugal, according to @The Bear, who shot these pictures a few months ago. Three euros for a dozen chestnuts might be a good deal, but The Bear doesn’t tell us if he made the purchase.
The following two pics by The Bear are of a “scooter of some description” in front of a hostel, not a cat home, in Porto, Portugal,
and a “happy gang on a recent tour of Portugal with IMTBIKE.com. We are happy, but not because the trip is over!”
Young boy, ‘big bike’
Here is a shot of the son of a “delightful caretaker” who “really enjoyed his first seat on a ‘big bike,’ bless him” according to @Tjilpi, who took the picture a couple of weeks ago on a “recent ride through South Africa to celebrate 50 years of friendship with another Aussie friend,” when they stopped overnight at Calitzdorp. Tjilpi says a full report of their three-week ride “including across the fabulous Lesotho” is in the International section of RideAsia.net.
Above the cloud
The shot below of a 2021 KTM 690 Enduro R and a 2018 BMW R1200 GSA was taken about a week ago by @The Cone of Silence at the top of the Bridle Track in Hill End, New South Wales.
A cold but beautiful morning looking down to the cloud lingering in the valley above the Turon and Macquarie rivers. We stopped for a ‘dingo’s breakfast’ (a quick piss and a look around) before descending through the cloud to the valley floor and rode all the way to Bathurst.
“A stunning location by anyone’s standards.”
State park
Here are three shots from @Nytrainer taken a week ago during a “ride down the backside of Letchworth State Park, Western New York, USA.” The bike is a 2021 KTM 890 Adventure.
And good evening to all
And finally, our last picture of the week is submitted by @Cementhead and features his 2011 Suzuki Burgman 650 “one beautiful May evening on a little ride in Wisconsin’s dairy land.”
That’s it for now, but we’ll be back, and thanks for visiting. Be sure to send us your pictures, and come back for more next week!
