After Two Rides We Are Officially Indoctrinated

Our very first desert ride was with Dive and a few friends in the desert of Wenden.  It was a good break in ride, pretty darned dusty but no rocks or mountains to climb.

We ate Dive's dust on the entire trip-goodness knows he made sure there was enough of it ;)

Someone thought this would make a good photo op.  I guess you don't realize how tall the saguaro cactus is until it's seen in a photo like this.

David stopped long enough to let me get a picture of the desert

Just a place to stop and BS I guess.

That was our first ride and it was fun, we were ready to explore the deserts of Parker and Earp.
Our park here in Parker is sort of separated into four groups of people One group has the boat people, most are kind of uppity sorry to say and tend to totally stick together.  Another group is just your regular, 'we come here to relax and enjoy and don't really have any toys' group.  Needless to say that is where we have parked in the past and loved it.  And then there is the desert group.  They actually physically congregate at the end of the park so that they can ride their four wheeler etc across the road into the desert.  In CA you are not allowed to ride on BLM land (which is what the park is on).  The riders park where they do because it is a very short distance to the desert and they can just slowly ride rather than trailer their ATV's.  This group is also pretty tightly knit but so not 'uppity' as the boat people and it is where we parked this year hoping to break into the group.
It turns out one of the group played pool with David last year and invited us to ride with them yesterday...yay we are in but oh my what a ride.

This is how we started out-looks pretty harmless right?  Much like our Wenden ride.  Pffft do not be fooled, see those mountain-that's where we were headed.

We went up....

 

And up BTW this was not the steepest hill we traveled and by far not the roughest.

What goes up must come down-very carefully at that.  Pretty narrow and rocky but the old Cammi did just fine....here...

I say she did fine 'here' because it was on a decline-a very narrow path-ed decline with shear dangerous edges on both sides-that the Cammi's back wheels (on my side BTW) began to slip over the edge.  Good gosh we couldn't get her back on the trail and I wondered if we were gonna go down, David wondered the same he later told me.  He finally got her driven up on the driver's side edge enough so that the back wheels on  my side were back on the path.  I'm not sure if my knuckles have recovered even yet from hanging on so tight!  Once we caught up with the rest of the pack they said they thought that one was a little narrow!  Our cammi is three inches wider than their Razors and three inches means a lot sometimes.  Phew says I .

We were both surprised at how much water we ran across (and through).  

We rode to the sand dunes and in them.  The guys had to try their luck getting up this huge dune.  Too much air in the tires and not a one made it-

This is David and cammi giving it a try.

One always needs to stop and contemplate new strategies.

I didn't get a lot of pictures because I couldn't remove my hands from the safety bar much of the time.  I wasn't scared (except for tires off of the path time) but it was darned bumpy and or steep but oh so danged much fun.  The guys said, numerous times, is this really your first ride in the mountains-you did great. Apparently our leader, Bob who is 72 years old mind you, is known for taking the most challenging trails.  In fact one of the wives wont go along when Bob is at the helm.  Me, I will go anytime.