Over the years, we had heard of many fun trips over to Juniper Dunes north of Pasco, WA but had been unable to go on any of them. Then, due to a property rights dispute with a local landowner, the public access to Juniper Dunes had been closed. Fast forward about 2 or 3 years to the New Years 2007 trip to Herrling Island with Lyle Duronso from the Mt. Baker Motorcycle Club and the topic of a trip to Juniper came about. See, Lyle had a friend from Whatcom County that sold his local dairy farm and bought a farm that bordered the BLM land of Juniper Dunes. He had invited Lyle and friends to gain access through his place. To summarize the conversations, we settled on President's Day weekend for a large group trip to Juniper with 8 people from WAQ and 6 or so from Mt. Baker Motorcycle Club.
Too bad the two groups had a miscommunication on when President's Day was. This resulted in the two groups making separate trips on back-to-back weekends. But armed with directions that could have only been given by Lyle, we set off to explore Juniper Dunes. Jason, Laura, Emily, Troy, Barb, Ryan, and Ethan left Thursday evening after work/school. We spent the night at the Vantage boat launch and met Al Friday morning for breakfast and carried on in to Juniper.
After a thorough driving tour of the Bengen farm, we had camp set up and were ready to ride around noon on Friday. After a couple hours of riding, we came back to camp and had lunch. Then Jason, Barb, Ryan, Ethan, and Al headed out to ride the perimeter of the dunes area. After about two-thirds around the perimeter and having loads of fun with exploring and wheelies (see pics of "Redneck Rider" Al and E-dawg),
we came across a group of motorcyclists from Canada that flagged us down. Turns out one of the guys had just crashed bad and broke his collarbone. Being roughly 5+ miles from the staging area, they asked if we would help by shuttling Rocky (the guy with the broken collarbone) out to the truck as it would be extremely difficult to get him out on dirt bikes. So of course we helped out and I took Rocky back and Ryan shuttled one of the other riders back to get the extra dirt bike. After Barb, Ethan, Al, and Jason had been waiting at the staging area for Ryan for what seemed like plenty of time, we realized that the rest of the Canadians had returned with Rocky's bike. We asked where Ryan was and they said they were following Ryan back about 10 minutes earlier, but that he missed the cut-off to the staging area and continued on down the pipeline. Ryan's story was that he just wanted to get in a little more exploring before it was pitch black. Which brings up a good point- now we had a legitimate excuse for being gone so long from Laura and the kids at camp! Anyway, we had a good dinner of BBQ salmon and a very enjoyable night around the campfire.
Saturday brought even sunnier and warmer weather. Short sleeves or light shirts were comfortable for riding in. Everyone went for the perimeter ride, which I would guess to be 3 hours and 15 miles. The kids (Emily, age 6, and Troy, age 4) rode so well and had so much fun on their new quads that Santa brought them for Christmas (a Honda TRX90 for Emily and a Kawi KFX50 for Troy). Also worthy of mention was that while the group was playing in the big dune areas by the South parking lot, something internal to Ethan's motor broke. He heard some clicking noises and the quad died and wouldn't restart. The recoil starter had very little resistance on the pull indicating little compression and a likely valve train issue. So, he rode on the back with Ryan and the group finished the rest of the ride with Ethan's quad back at the staging area in the wide open hoping some thief would somehow steal it so he could use the insurance money to buy a new one. Our plan was to take my truck back after lunch to recover it.
This incident presented the perfect legitimate excuse for me to take the truck out wheeling in the desert, so I of course jumped at it! Keeping in mind that the 2002 Ford F350 7.3L PSD is lifted with 5" Fabtech springs, running 37" BFG mud-terrains, equipped with front and rear ARB's and 4.56 Yukon gears, amongst a host of other goodies, it did quite well on the cross country escapade considering it was approximately 9000lbs of rolling stock.
We got Ethan's quad winched up on the flat deck with no issues and proceeded the long drive out the main access road and associated highways back to the North end of the dunes and the Bengen's property. Note to all: it is ridiculously hard to find ice cream in Pasco. We were lucky to not have been thrown out of a couple business establishments in our never ending quest for an ice cream cone on the way back to camp.
Sunday brought the end of the trip for Barb, Ryan, and Ethan and they headed home around 1100. Al, Laura, the kids, and Jason went for another really fun ride mid-day Sunday. Late that afternoon, Troy, Al, and Jason spent another couple hours at the close-to-camp dunes. Troy was riding so incredibly well, he continued to amaze us. He developed techniques for getting unstuck on dune hill climbs too. First, he would try and just coast back down the hill. If that didn't work, he would assume the forever-infamous Rick Krause position of standing on the rear fenders while holding the handlebars and rocking the machine to free it and then coast back down the hill. If that didn't do it, he'd get off and go to the front bumper and push the bike backwards down the hill and let it freeride down to the bottom. Lastly, as a last resort if that didn't work, he'd look at me as if to say "please help dad, I tried my best".
Al was kind enough to stay with us on the drive home since Jason was having torque converter issues on the recently rebuilt tranny (grrrrr). All in all, a wonderful trip was had by us all.
Check out the rest of the photos to see more of Juniper Dunes
Juniper Dunes ATV Trip-
Pasco, Washington
February 15-19, 2007
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