Check out my new storage box on the back of my ATV! It actually isn't as roomy as my soft-sided one, but this one has a seat built into it for my daughter to ride on in case she doesn't feel like riding her own machine.
Looking north. The snow-capped mountains in the distance is a range north of Ellensburg & I-90.
As with most of our trips, we were lost most of the time. Here's Mitch looking at our map for a clue where we might be.
Ah, now we knew where we were! We came up to the top of this ridge and could see Naches and the Yakima Valley to our East.
The wind was blowing HARD up here!
Looking west down the ridge you can see more snow-capped mountains and hint of Mt. Rainier under the clouds.
We dropped down the other side of the ridge to see where we might come out over on Highway 410. Here's a view looking back towards the ridge. Cool rock formations.
After dropping down to more desolate terrain, imagin our surprise when we say this! This is Mud Lake. If you look right beyond the lake you will see a valley. Highway 410 is in that valley. I've driven through that section hundreds of times and didn't know this lake was that close. (I'm guessing the name comes from what the lake looks like by late summer/early fall. It was hardly muddy when we cruised down to it to take a look.
Not too much further beyond the lake we did run into 410. We then turned around and started heading back. We backtracked most of the way, but did find another route from the top of the ridge back down towards our trucks.
On this ride we found a really neat and remote campground. I figured it would be a good place to take the motorhome if there was a decent road I could drive in on. Well, we followed a decent road, but it ended at a locked gate! There was a big issue up in this area last fall where a local landowner stopped allowing access across his land. In this area, the landownership looks like a giant checkerboard. Alternating peices are state owned and private owned. This makes it tough for access to explore, hunt and/or fish. The State has been doing land swaps for many years trying to eliminate the checkerboard design.
Anyway, we had a good ride and found some great views. We didn't explore all of the roads in the area as the ridge road continued west and there was also another road at the bottom of the ridge (on the south side) also heading west. We'll have to make another trip up to see where they go.
Again, these roads had Tom Low writtin all over them...
