This year’s annual event at 29 Palms was
blessed with spectacular weather, unlike last year’s rugged experience. Vic Sucher did an excellent job organizing the
rides, with detailed maps and various options from which to choose.
The Friday crowd arrived early and
ventured around the desert area of 29 Palms at their leisure. The bulk of the crowd arrived Saturday
morning, as was the case for myself, and we proceeded to the Joshua Tree Park
entrance just East of town. There was a
small hassle with the entrance office, but all was finally settled. The group proceeded through the park to
Cottonwood Station. Some folks headed
back after this trek of about 45 miles, and we did unfortunately have a couple
of breakdowns, making good use of the trouble truck. Those who decided to continue the ride
proceeded out of the park to Interstate 10, where a few chose to head a short
distance East to Chiriaco Summit for lunch at the small road stop there
adjacent to the Patton Museum. However,
the majority of us continued southwest to the farming town of Mecca. There is not much there other than a couple
of mediocre Mexican restaurants, where we stopped for lunch and gas for those
who needed it. The interesting part of
the ride to Mecca is the scenic
array of box canyons en route. The
return ride was simply the reverse of the outbound route, returning through Joshua
Tree Park
to 29 Palms and our base at El Rancho Dolores Motel. For those who completed the entire route, the
first day’s journey totaled about 130 miles.
Friday evening concluded with a group
dinner at the traditional Edchada’s Mexican faire in town. Tim Graber
held a brief meeting at dinner, updating events and items of interest,
including acceptance of one new member and introduction of guests. We are
always glad to see our folks from Arizona
and other areas out of the SoCal local vicinity. Some folks had elected to dine elsewhere at
a rib house on the west side of town, but a few showed up at the end of our
session.
Sunday morning brought the second day’s
ride into Joshua Tree Park, this time in a different direction, proceeding to
Key’s View overlook and then to Hidden Valley. Our esteemed Max Bubeck briefly lost balance
upon arrival at Key’s View, toppling at a standstill and becoming pinned under
his faithful Indian Four. We rescued Max
quickly; no damage to the bike, and only a minor hand injury to Max. We rode on to Hidden
Valley
and then exited the park through the West entrance. The bulk of the group had lunch at Kim’s in
the town of Joshua Tree, and then
returned to the motel in 29 Palms to conclude the ride. The total for the second day was about half
the mileage of the first day’s ride. All
in all, the entire weekend was quite enjoyable with the good weather and
spectacular desert scenery! Everyone
headed for home after a memorable weekend.