Recreation Biking Vehicle Adventures: John Wayne Trail 10/20/2015

First night staying on the trail was a bit windy but we awoke to calm sunny sky's . This was the day that we would face the dreaded Goat head section in Smyrna. These dang things are a cyclists worst nightmare. I did not take a photo myself but found on on the web to share. Today we also had a fairly large detour around a section of closed JWT. Unsure why it is closed. Private land, missing trestle or probably Goat heads? I will look into it for sure. Our hopeful destination of the day would be the town Warden.

Our morning ritual was to cook breakfast in the vestibule of your tents while staying nice and warm in our sleeping bag. We had frost on our tents most mornings and sunrise was around 6:30. So staying warm in our bags having breakfast and packing until then is quiet cozy. We typically got on the trail between 7-8, closer to 8 mostly. Cycling down the trail from Beverly you first ride through the Crab Creek Wildlife area. There was a couple trail heads with toilets soon after where we camped and Ward told me there is actual a camp ground we could have stayed at. Also this is near an area called the Beverly sand dunes. This is popular with the ORV crowd and the growing Fat Bike community. I have not ridden hear yet.

I will probably say this several times...Crab Creek was one of the prettiest sections of the trail. We were keeping a good pace when we noticed little tan dots stuck all around our tires, We both stopped and sure enough...Goat Heads! 100's of them in each tire. Shawn looked at the GPS. Sure enough, we are in Smyrna. Both Shawn and I are running tubeless tires and a liquid sealant in them that fills punctures. This was time to test the product for sure. Each thorn you pull....phhht. Pull, spin wheel and it would seal. A half hour or so went by and a little less tire pressure. We pumped the tires back up and all good. Shawn came up with a good method (untested). Flip your bike upside down and complete this process. Lifting a heavy bike to spin the wheel is a PIA.We both over filled our tires with the sealant before the trip. Shawn brought extra (didn't need) and I will next time, just in case. Now that that event was over for now we needed to figure out the detour.We made our only wrong turn here. Long story short. We went left instead of right and ended up having to ride pavement on busy hwy 26 all the way to Othello. It did allow us to refuel with gas station warming oven food though (Gas station RD E SW/ HWY 26). Finally made it to Othello and we loaded up with water, ibuprofen and ice cream.

By now we were back on course and heading to Warden, still on pavement. We would pick up the trail again here. Warden doesn't have much to offer but does have a convenient store where we picked up some cold ones for the evening. Back on our bikes we hit the trail and pedaled far enough out of town to set up camp for the night. Long day mostly on pavement. Oh we nick named this detour Onion road. It stunk as in this sucks and it was also littered with actual onions. This is onion and potato area it appeared. Also we hit more Goat heads coming out of Warden. We decided to leave them in this time and remove once at camp. Probably not a good idea. As the Goat head thorns diameter gets bigger. Which leaves a bigger hole for the sealant to fill...All good though. This was the last we saw of them

Forgot to mention. Chris left us that Monday night in Beverly and met back up with us on Wednesday afternoon just outside of St John