Adventure Motorcycle Blog

Today was filled with highs and lows. This one won’t be too wordy since I have some maintenance issues to research. The campground (Trail Tunnel Campground) last night in Wilton was great. Highly recommend if you are the bicycle type or just because you want to go to a nice, family owned park. The campground store was attached to the owner’s house and they had all hands on deck maintaining and running the place. Woke up around 5 this morning, looked through maps, weather reports, and checked batteries on everything. Next I went for some instant coffee on the small camp stove and it’s not that great.. If it was DD instant coffee I’d probably have a different opinion.. My site was all the way in the back up on a hill so when I left I turned the ignition on, shifted into neutral and coasted silently through the entire campsite until I hit the front where the store was. I hit the start button, fired it up and took off. I didn’t want to wake anybody. This place was about 15 miles off the trail so I had some backtracking to do. Hit a gas station and then found a place to jump back on the trail. I went through Sparta and a few other little towns. Today was about 85% gravel and backroads, but the other 15% was all trail and ridiculous. I captured around 25 minutes of it between three files. I’ll get into that more later. I stopped for lunch and right when I was about to leave, Jim and Ron walked in. They were all kitted out in the same riding gear I had so I assumed they were adventure/dual sport bike guys. Ron had a 650 and Jim had a Himalayan. We got talking and it turned out they were doing the same trail as I was and headed north. I asked if I could join for a bit and soon after we all took off. I spent lunch through the late afternoon with them. We hit a few sections right before we were done for the night that no doubt challenged each of us and the durability of the bikes. Up, down, gravel, rocks, bigger rocks, big puddles, sand, even more sand, down trees, low branches, etc. I think Jim dropped his bike 5 times, but somehow I didn’t drop mine. The go pro footage is great! When we popped out of the woods back to the main road we all stopped, turned the bikes off and had to relax for a few. That’s when I noticed oil all over the bottom of my bike . At first I thought it was the new mono OHLINS shock, but after another look it was motor oil and appeared to be all over the backside of the motor as well with a bunch of it being around the primary drive sprocket..nope, not good. Jim and Ron departed to go find a hotel, but I turned around and about 2 miles down the road was the Chippewa Campground so that’s where I headed. This place has showers, and that’s about it. It’s super quiet, in the woods and the bugs are terrible. I got the tent up as soon as I could, took a quick shower and have been typing this and researching possible T7 oil issues since. I searched for nearby Yamaha dealers and found one east of here. It’s rare you find one of these places open on a Monday but their page says they open at 8 on Monday’s. I might be down for the count for a few days if they need to mess with motor. I’m hopping it’s overflow from a recent oil change. We will see. Either way it’s under warranty. The new bike is big and quite the workout to handle on the sandy roads/trails or steep/loose stuff in the woods. It’s horrible in the super fine, deep sand that’s common up here. I can’t throw it around like I could the old bike. At times it goes where it wants and I just have to hang on. When in doubt, throttle out…. it works half the time 🤷🏼‍♂️😂. It’s super top heavy when full of gas plus all my luggage on it. Completely different feel than my last bike, but it sure is a rocket 🚀 on the blacktop. Horrible signal so only a few pics uploaded 🤷🏼‍♂️