P1000m5 Been getting it out

[mykaos]

We ended up taking a revised version of the prior 2 days worth of riding and coming up with about a 4 hour loop.
One of the boys gets a little “anxious” if he doesn’t know where he is at. I figured out over the prior 2 day’s, he did pretty good as long as he had one of our I Phones in hand and he could watch our location / progress change on the On X Hunt app we use. So early on during today’s ride I handed him my phone (which it is usually off limits), had the app opened and showed him where we were at, the routes we had taken over the prior 2 days (I had used 2 different track colors) and put him in charge of the route. He didn’t pick the easiest or the shortest. He paid attention to where we were at and if his mom and brothers who were behind us got to far out of sight, he would have me stop and wait.
One small score for me .. .
We managed to find a spot we were comfortable with letting them “practice”, we spent a couple hours there just letting them get some more wheel time.
With exception of the main forest road, the oldest actually piloted the Pioneer all day today.

 

[Admin]

 

[mykaos]

@mykaos - I think it’s awesome what you are doing with these young men! Hopefully they will adopt this new hobby vs other not-so-good stuff kids can get into these days.

The new ride looks terrific also. Will you be able to tandem pull the camper and the toy hauler trailer in your area?


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Thank you for the words.
Everything fits in the ToyHauler.

 

[mykaos]

It is tight ..
But they both fit ..
The blue trashed / extra sleeping bag is to keep the winch cable fairlead from scratching up the ramp door to bad (no new marks on the way home).
If I had an uber expensive Toy Hauler I might worry about some scratches, but I don’t.

 

[JTW]

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It is tight ..
But they both fit ..
The blue trashed / extra sleeping bag is to keep the winch cable fairlead from scratching up the ramp door to bad (no new marks on the way home).
If I had an uber expensive Toy Hauler I might worry about some scratches, but I don’t.

Good call on the sleeping bag... after my maiden voyage in my enclosed. I now have 3 spots where the rear winch and roto mounts scratched the s*** out of the aluminum ramp gate

 

[Smitty335]

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It is tight ..
But they both fit ..
The blue trashed / extra sleeping bag is to keep the winch cable fairlead from scratching up the ramp door to bad (no new marks on the way home).
If I had an uber expensive Toy Hauler I might worry about some scratches, but I don’t.

Looks like you need to check your front alignment , looks toed way out?

 

[Dirtstiffs-1000]

Cool pictures, thanks for sharing the part about getting young men outdoors.

 

[DDDonkey]

Congrats and welcome, hope to see you on the trails some time. I'm in the West valley out by Luke, we love to ride up North, and hope to do a snow trip this year off Stoneman Lake Rd. Have you checked out that area yet?

 

[Little_g]

I need to meet up with some people in AZ and hit the trails. Live in Parker. When does everyone ride and meet up and where are you located? Need to get out and ride. Poor pioneer is being neglected lol

 

[JTW]

I need to meet up with some people in AZ and hit the trails. Live in Parker. When does everyone ride and meet up and where are you located? Need to get out and ride. Poor pioneer is being neglected lol

Folks meet every Saturday at 9:00 at the old gas station off Main Street to ride.

 

[mykaos]

After finally getting everything cleaned up (I do not envy you guys that play in real mud regularly ) from the Pine trip,,, we took advantage of the boys Veterans Day break and loaded both machines on the open trailer and headed off to a local spot we had not been to yet.



It is kind of embarrassing to admit considering how long I have lived in the East Valley, how many hundreds if not thousands of times I been past this trail while traveling US-60, this was a 1st.

Yes, I’m very proud of being an AZ resident of 40 years and know this state pretty well. This 45 mile, 5 hour loop just showed me again why I continue to deal with CA, IL and NY trying to move in and continue to whine about the summer heat ..



Overall a pretty easy trail in my mind, but it does offer a bit of everything. Elevation changes, reasonable tight switch backs, couple of somewhat technical rock sections (my favorite ) and even some WOT spots.. most importantly, plenty of wheel time for the boy’s.







I’m sure a few of the other AZ members know this spot a bunch better than me and can appreciate this area of the state as well.
One thing you won’t see, is us out here on a Saturday or Sunday as I’m sure that sadly, it’s a zoo since it’s so close to the Valley.

Thanksgiving: loading up the Toy Hauler and heading to Mohave Co / Kingman.


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[Little_g]

I’m still trying to get out and ride. My schedule has had me stuck on weekends for two months now and that IS going to change next month. Got together with a club in Quartzsite and they ride Saturdays so hopefully will be able to get going next month and plans rides with more people. One of the main reasons I moved here was to ride and I need to start. My pioneer is being neglected lol

 

[Bigred48]

We decided that we all wanted another ride today before we loaded up and headed back to the house.
As we were making our way out we realized we had made an excellent choice heading up on a Monday as weekend traffic in Pine had started and there were a couple more SxS sightings on the easy sections that we had to ourselves yesterday.

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Looks good! what are you running for tires? i like the stance! im in Peoria.

 

[mykaos]

Tire choice / size compliments of the prior owner.
27 10R 14, Chicane RX w/ 2” spacers, all 4 corners.
“Extremely” pleased w/ the tires. The only thing I want to change is the rear size to match the rim width better. I would buy them again, in fact I’m planning on putting a set on the RZR 570 once we finish off the el’ cheepo’ Carsisle the prior owner put on it.




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[mykaos]

Managed to complete a couple of projects on the toy hauler before it was time to head up to Kingman for Thanksgiving. One was gaining enough clearance under the bottom bunk when it is retracted so the Pioneer will clear w/ the tires aired up and the light bar in the roof in place. Managed to get 80” without having to “re-engineer” anything (which for me is dangerous ). Pioneer fits, I’m happy.

Ended up staying west of Kingman, out in Golden Valley at the Trade Winds RV Park. Highly recommend this place if your RV’n and up in this part of AZ. Extremely accommodating to our little crew of 6 and both SxS’s. Plus, within 10 minutes to the West by SxS straight from the park, are the Black Mountains.

The weather sucked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. No other way to describe it. Cold, windy, rain and more cold.
Thanksgiving day we saw a window of about 3 hours shaping up.. so we made use of it..

You parallel St art 68 for a while:










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[mykaos]

Most of the trail is really easy:



The last 1/4 + mile will make up for the rest of the trail.
Destination is this abandoned settlement:







The retaining wall in the background is AZ St Rt 68:


I don’t know anything about it other than it is at Union Pass, I bet I drove by it 300 times over the years and never knew it was there until about 8 years ago when a friend of mine took me there in his Rhino.

We beat the rain back to the toy hauler by maybe 5 minutes .


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[mykaos]

One of the projects I needed to get done before this trip was a COMPLETE 2 year service on the Pioneer. I was running short on time so I cheated and dropped it off at Western Honda. Very happy with the end result.
Now back to the ride.. ..

By Saturday the weather settled down so we headed out for the day.

Only agenda was head west “ish” into the Black Mountains and have a look around:





The Colorado River off in the distance:



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[mykaos]

This was going to be interesting:


Right after my son took this shot the Pioneer got close and personal with the wall. Nothing broken or missing contrary to what it sounded like .. I should have picked a better line .


Walk in the park for the little one. The 2” lift I put on right before this trip was worth every penny.






Great day, great ride. Lots of fun. We were out for about 6 hours. Everyone got wheel time both rides.




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[mykaos]

What I did notice was the closer we got to Bullhead City more traffic showed up on the trails.
We were the only Honda.
Stay on the Golden Valley side.. nice and quiet.

Even the tow pig got to see some action when we went seeking an appropriate shooting spot between rain storms. It actually came back muddier than the SxS’s :


We didn’t get the ride time I had hoped for this trip, however we still got a coupe of decent rides in. We even managed to support the Kingman local economy by supporting our gun habits and exercising our gun habits ... was kind of an early Christmas for the boys..




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[mykaos]

For what's it worth..
We still have both and are still getting them out but not as much as we had hoped..it's called life 😞.
Sold the toy hauler but kept Tow Pig.. Ended up w/ a DP MH.
Just the fiancé and myself this last weekend and our maiden voyage w/ the DP as well as the Pioneer.
Long story short: bent a tie rod on the Pioneer deep into the east side of the Hualapai's (NW AZ) Saturday mid morning. Couldn't keep a "fix" in place for more than 20'. No cell service, no one else around, dropped a GPS pin on my phone, grabbed water / food.. we hiked 2 hours to cell service, another 1/2 hour to gravel road and a ride back to the RV. Ended up getting put in touch with a local volunteer off road rescue group, Mohave 4wd Recovery Team. These guys are simply awesome and I owe them a HUGE debt of gratitude. We met 2 of them with their rock crawlers at 1800 (between the GPS pin I had and their in-depth knowledge of the area a night rescue was a non issue for them and they genuinely didn't want to see my machine sit out there) and went back. Now we had a proper winch, more tools and stuff to actually hobble it together and bring it out under it's own and back to camp about 11:30.
The Pioneer is in the garage waiting for tie rods. Sticking w/ stock as in my opinion, I'll leave that as the weak link rather than the steering rack. And.. I'll carry a couple extra tie rods now 😉 .
I'm no survival expert, however.. we were prepared w/ plenty of water / food / GPS / had map downloaded onto my phone prior and we knew when to abandon the machine and get ourselves to a better spot before dark.
Still love the Pioneer and what it is capable of in the rocks / desert.
DP did great until the trip home when a "motorist" decided he liked the frontend of our coach more than we do. It's at the body shop... 🤬.

 

[mykaos]

The challenge:

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