Dirt Bike Ride Through the Fire Area and a Burned Up Excavator

Saturday September 12, 2020 Guerneville CA.

Dirt bike ride day

My brother Barry was coming by around noon today to go out on a dirt bike ride in the fire area.

When he arrived he said plans have changed as we needed to go up into the fire burn area and meet up with a rehab fire guy that will be fixing up all the fire roads and fire breaks to get ready for winter.

As it was we were able to do that and go for our dirt bike ride. We sorta combined both of them.

Rehab guys

So we rode up into the hills and were fortunate to run into the rehab guys right away so didn’t need to hunt for them.

We stopped and talked with them to get them going. Steve Parmeter was there from Cazadaro with his D6 cat to smooth out the roads and put in water bars and such.dozer1

 

Headed to Hulbert Creek

We’d meet up with those guys a few more times today but for now we could go on our dirt bike ride through the burned area so we did going down this road and we rode down to Hulbert creek to look for roads they’d bulldozed and might need some rehab work before winter sets in.barry2

 

We ran into this neighbor taking this machine up to his house to work on something.fork3

 

We were looking for the end of a road that comes down from the top to see if the fire dozers tore it up or not. We had to get out and go for a walk to check it out and it appeared the dozers didn’t come down this far.walk4

 

Visiting the Bushes and Buchanans

We headed to the Bush place and had a nice visit with them. There house didn’t burn.

From there we rode up to the Buchanan place and said hi to Dave and his son Kelly at their house which was spared by the fire largely because their neighbors protected the house when the fire came through as there were no fire guys in the area at the time.

Kathleen’s animals

Then we rode up to Kathleen’s place but no one was home., except some of her animals.

Barry was saying hi to the chickens that seemed glad to see us.chickens5

 

When this big friendly dog came by.dog6

 

No one was home so we continued up the road when we ran into the rehab guy again.fireguy7

 

Getting a drink of water

We were thirsty and needed a drink of water so we headed back towards my place to get a drink of water.

On the way I remembered we could get a drink at Indian springs so we diverted to that spot and got a nice drink of nice cold spring water.spring8

 

Smoky day

Then we headed for the Guerneville Overlook and I was surprised how smoky the day was.smoky9

 

We were heading to Robert’s place when we ran into these state park guys.parkguys10

 

Barry is a retired surveyor so was showing the dozer operator some roads he’d mapped. One of the hardest things for the fire guys was knowing were they were in this forest.dozer11

 

An oh oh

We left there headed for Robert’s place when we ran into these guys. Something was up as the fire truck had it’s red light on which none of them had on during the fire.trucks12

 

We passed the trucks and parked to see what they were doing.trucks15

 

It turned out this excavator caught fire on the way up the hill and pretty much burned up in the engine area. It started because a hydraulic line broke and oil got on the hot engine.burned13

 

The machine’s engine and hydraulics had burned so it wouldn’t move on it’s own and would need to be towed out.burned14

 

No one’s home at the Robert place

We continued to Robert’s house but no one was home so we started back down the road. the fire trucks had left and the the dozer guy moved in to see about puling the excavator out. We talked with the dozer operator and he said they’d bring in another dozer tomorrow with a winch on it.cat16

 

We rode on home stopping at a couple places to check stuff out.

Barry took off for home and I tended my chickens and did a bit of chair hopping before going in for the night.

Nice dirt bike ride.

Nice day.

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2 Responses to Dirt Bike Ride Through the Fire Area and a Burned Up Excavator

  1. Patsy Irene says:

    It would be very easy to get lost up there, especially me, since I get lost in a mall!
    Sounds like an interesting day though. I trust the hermit is still not moved into his home? That big white dog, is he up there by himself? :(

  2. Nancy K says:

    I imagine those mountains are just covered in roads, so it would be hard to know where you were without a current map. So sad to see that excavator. They aren’t exactly cheap to replace!!

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