Craters of the Moon National Monument

By Joe Berk

As mentioned in our introductory Idaho blog, I had briefly visited the Craters of the Moon National Monument on the 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride with the Chinese and other folks who owned RX3 motorcycles.  Good buddy Baja John did all the navigating and planning on that ride; I just rode at the front of the pack and took all the credit.

Baja John posing at the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserved entrance exactly 10 years ago. Tempus fugit, my friends.

We planned those early CSC trips as if it was just Baja John and me riding, and I figured on way too many miles each day.  John and I can do 600-mile days easily.  When we planned the larger Western America Adventure Ride, even 400-mile days were a huge challenge.  A good rule of thumb on such larger group rides is to stick to a maximum of 200 to 250 miles each day.  I didn’t know that then.

Anyway, on that first Craters of the Moon stop, we were on a big mileage day and we didn’t have too much time to spare.   We pulled into the Craters entrance, grabbed a few photos, and continued our trek to Twin Falls.  I recently wanted to do a Destinations piece on Craters for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and when I looked through my files, I found I only had a couple of Craters photos.  That dearth of useable photos became part of the reason Susie and I visited Craters again.

The ride from Boise (where Susie and I started that morning) to Craters takes you east on I-84 and then east on US Highway 20.  As an aside, Highway 20 runs across the entire United States, from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts.  Part of Highway 20 in Idaho was designated as the Medal of Honor Highway by Governor Brad Little in 2019, and Susie and I took it to Craters.

US Highway 20, Idaho’s Medal of Honor Highway. The photo ops through this part of the world are impressive. Bring a polarizer.
Idaho is justifiably proud of its Medal of Honor winners.  That’s an M1 Abrams tank in the background, a turbine-powered, 70-ton beast that can hit 60 mph and fire on the move with great accuracy.  Three Medal of Honor recipients currently live in Idaho; as many as 48 people awarded the Medal of Honor have an Idaho connection.

After Highway 20, it’s a left turn onto Highway 26 to get to Craters of the Moon.  It’s more scenic riding, including the towns of Carey and Picabo.  Carey is where we had a comical encounter on the Western America Adventure Tour when riding with our Chinese compañeros across Idaho.  On that day 10 years ago, it happened to be Pioneer Day.  We didn’t know that, nor did we know that there was a parade in Carey.  I was in my usual spot (in front of the pack), Gresh was riding alongside me, and our group of a dozen RX3 riders were right behind us.  As we approached Carey, local residents lined the streets.  Many were holding American flags.  They waved and cheered us as we rode into town.  We had no idea what was going on.  Gresh flipped his faceshield up and said, “Wow, a lot of people are following the blog” (I had been blogging our trip across the western US every day).   We didn’t know it at the time, but we were only a few minutes ahead of the parade Carey was expecting, and those good Idahoans thought we were the advance guard.  It was fun and it made for a great story (which I have told about a thousand times by now).

On US Highway 26 heading east into the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Note the volcanic rock on either side of the road.

The good folks in Carey were not waiting for Susie and me on this trip, but we had a good time anyway.  When we rolled into Picabo a little further down the road, we had an even better time when we topped off the Jeep and had lunch (which was excellent).  I told you a bit about that (and the Ernest Hemingway connection) yesterday.

The volcanic flow in the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.   That’s Echo Cone in the distance.

The National Park Service describes the landscape in and around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve as “weird and scenic” and that’s an apt description.  The landscape is almost lunar-like.  Its alien features consist of mostly dark brown solidified lava surrounded and sometimes punctuated by patches of green vegetation.  It makes for a dramatic landscape and awesome photo ops.

A walkway above the pahoehoe lave field.
Sue reading about the pahoehoe lava. The National Park Service does a great job making these kinds of places accessible and providing explanations telling the story at each location.

You can ride a designated, one-way, circular tarmac road through the Preserve, with paved offshoots for specific sights.   One of the first stops is a pahoehoe lava field.  The name is a particular type of lava, and it comes from the lava volcanoes and their flows in Hawaii.  Pahoehoe lava is characterized by a rough and darkened surface.   What made it even more interesting is the walkway above the lava.  You can walk a loop of about a quarter of a mile and see what the hardened lava looks like.  The walkway is a good thing; I don’t think it would be possible to navigate this terrain on foot.

Monolithic cinder cone fragments in one of the lava fields.

Another lava structure is called cinder cone.  Sometimes these structures break apart and leave monolithic forms like those in the photograph above.  One of the more dramatic areas in Craters of the Moon is the Inferno Cone.  There’s a place to park near the base and you can climb to the peak.

The climb to the Inferno Cone peak.  Sue did it.  I watched.
Completing the circular ride through Craters of the Moon. The lava formations to the left are called cinder bombs.

There are several lava tubes (caves formed by lava flow) in Craters of the Moon, and if you wish, you can hike into them.  We didn’t do that.  There are also longer hikes throughout the Preserve if you want to explore more.

There’s much to see and do at Craters of the Moon.  How long you stay and how much you see is up to you.  We were there for about three hours and we had a great visit.

The next stop on our Idaho expedition would be Twin Falls.   That’s coming up, so stay tuned.


If you would like to read about the Western America Adventure Ride and how CSC rewrote the motorcycle adventure touring book, the story is here:


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The Yanke Motor Museum

By Joe Berk

Talk about a hidden gem and a great destination:  The Yanke Motor Museum in Boise, Idaho is about as good as it gets.  There’s precious little information on the Internet about it, but trust me, it’s worth seeing. It’s not widely publicized and you can’t just roll up and visit its treasures; admission is by appointment only.  My advice is to make the run to Boise and make the effort to get an appointment.  The Yanke Motor Museum contains a world class automobile, motorcycle, tractor, and musical instrument collection.

A 1924 Packard convertible is one of the first vintage cars you encounter upon entering the Yanke Motor Museum.

As you know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of car and motorcycle museums, and I never heard of the Yanke Motor Museum.  It’s the only automotive museum in Idaho, and it never appeared on my radar before.  I only came across it because I Googled “motorcycle museums in Boise.”  Some of the Internet services won’t tell you that it’s by appointment only, but that’s the deal.  Further complicating things, some of the GPS programs get the directions wrong.  We used Waze to find the address and it worked.

There is a lot to see at the Yanke Motor Museum.  We were lucky: Sue and I had the place to ourselves.  We made an appointment and new good buddy Tyler (one of the curators) pulled up just as we entered the parking lot.  Tyler was in a silver Subaru WRX, so I liked him right away.  He opened the place just for us, and then he had to walk around turning all the lights on (and he flipped a lot of switches to do that).  The place is huge.

A 1957 Cadillac. This is a beautiful car. I was 6 years old when it rolled off the assembly line.

I didn’t quite know what to expect because when we entered the main display area (after walking through a collection of musical instruments), I at first saw mostly automobiles.  They were impressive and they were plentiful (see the Packard and drop-dead-gorgeous pink Cadillac above), with the odd motorcycle parked here and there.  There was a Ural and a couple of Harley dressers, so I asked Tyler if there were more motorcycles.  He smiled and pointed me toward another hall.  Wow, were there ever!  In fact, my back started bothering me lugging my boat-anchor Nikon D810 and 24-120 lens around to get the photos you see here, but it was worth it.

A Ural with a sidecar. Good buddy Dan owns one of these.

Before we got to the main motorcycle hall, we saw several more interesting motorcycles and the odd trike or two.  There was a ’37 SS Jag replicar.  It was flanked by a stunning cherry red Harley Servi-Car and a custom flathead Ford trike with Offenhauser heads.

Sweet!
A fire engine red Harley Servi-Car.
A flathead Ford trike. Check out the front brake.
A custom in every sense of the word. The workmanship is stunning.
Offenhauser heads. Offy also made complete 4-cylinder engines.  Think decades of Indy 500 dominance.
One last view of the flattie trike. Even the tires are beautiful.

Susie and I were blown away by the classic cars and the multiple motorcycles we encountered at the Yanke Motor Museum, and we hadn’t even made it to the motorcycle room yet.  In the main hall, classic motocross and other bikes were scattered among the cars and other vehicles.

I once had a friend who thought a Bultaco was a Mexican food item. No kidding.

There was a flatbed truck with a Harley XLCR Cafe Racer, a vintage Indian Chief, and a vintage Harley.

I could have bought a new ’77 XLCR just like this one for $3,000, but I couldn’t justify spending $3,000 for a motorcycle back then. I don’t know who I thought I had to justify it to.
A 1941 Indian Chief. Those fenders!

When we entered the motorcycle room, it was like being a kid in a candy shop.  No, wait, I take that back.  I used to be a kid in a candy shop six or seven decades ago.  This was better.  Just about everything imaginable was there if you are looking for cool motorcycles.  Desert racers, WW II military Harley 45s, modern bikes, custom bikes, vintage Harleys, vintage Indians, scooters, Whizzers, vintage flat track and flathead Harley race bikes, and more.  The Nikon was giving me fits weighing heavily on my lower back, and leaning over to get macro engine shots was getting downright painful, but I didn’t care.  Susie had an Advil, I swallowed it, and the photo safari continued.  I was on a mission.  Anything and everything for our ExNotes readers…that’s our mantra.

In the motorcycle room…check out the Army 45s.
A 1934 74-cubic-inch Harley VLD flathead, another stunning motorcycle.
A Lambretta!
Whizzers! Carlos, take note!
Harley-Davidson flathead flat track racing motorcycles.
Ah, the patina! Check out the steel shoe!
Flathead porn.
An Army 45 in decidedly non-Army colors.

The Yanke Motor Museum also contained some cool military stuff, including Jeeps and a few cannons.  Cannons!

A 1948 US Army Jeep.
A 25mm Hotchkiss cannon.
The same action as a Ruger No. 1. A classic falling block concept.
Another falling block artillery action.
A custom scope mount for direct fire. This thing must be a hoot to shoot. Folks at the Museum reload for it.

I thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, but when I peeked into an adjoining room I spotted several 37mm and 25mm projectiles in various stages of the reloading process.  Imagine that:  Reloading for your own cannons! There’s no doubt about it:  The folks who own and run the Yanke Motor Museum are our kind people.

Ron and Linda Yanke started the Museum.  An extremely successful entrepreneur, Ron is unfortunately no longer with us.  The Yanke family started the business empire with a machine shop.  Ron Yanke expanded the business holdings to sawmills, an air charter service, a firefighting equipment manufacturer, extensive timberland holdings, several real estate companies, a mechanical contracting firm, a manufactured housing company, and a couple of banks.  He was one of three original investors in Micron Technology, the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer.

The Yanke Motor Museum is located at 1090 Boeing Street in Boise, Idaho.  If you want to get in, here’s the web address that will get you started.


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Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

By Joe Gresh 

In 2019 we booked a campsite at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was a fairly large Native American city that served as the capital for the Chaco people a thousand years ago. Strung out along the canyon within walking distance of each other there are several large, condominium-style structures, some reaching 5 stories high and all of them with courtyards, living areas, kivas, and storage rooms. The condos were built with fantastically intricate stonework consisting of millions of large and small stones. Chaco society was well organized and their mathematics and architectural engineering were well advanced, as it would need to be in order to produce such big, complex buildings.

Also in 2019 the plague hit and Chaco Canyon was closed to visitors, so we never made it to the campground. The same thing happened in 2020, so we missed Chaco that year and instead spent our time arguing on the Internet about masks and vaccines with medically-trained basement dwellers. In 2021 we had a reserved campsite near the cliffs of the canyon and not long before we were due to arrive the cliff calved, covering our campsite with boulders. The campground was closed in order to clean up the rubble. The section where we were booked is still closed.

In 2022 we again called the ranger station at Chaco Canyon and reserved a site.  All looked well in 2022 but a day or two before we were to leave CT came down with a nasty cold and we decided camping would be no fun with one of us sick in bed. Reluctantly, we cancelled our reservations yet again. Our efforts to see Chaco Canyon seemed cursed. We decided to try again in 2023 and figured March would be a good time to go. We wanted to avoid the hot summer months. Building up to March everything was going swimmingly; this would be the year we finally made it to the historic Native American site.

And then the rain started. We watched the weather reports coming in from Chaco Canyon: rain, snow, hail. It rained at Chaco Canyon every day the week before we were to go. All roads leading to Chaco Canyon involve quite a few miles of dirt. The rougher, south entrance to the canyon was closed due to the muddy road being impassable. We didn’t care: we were going to Chaco even if we drowned in mud. Farmington was our staging area for the camping expedition and we drove in spotty rain all day to get there. Turning north out of Albuquerque on Highway 550 we stopped for gas. While I was filling the gas tank it started snowing. Then the wind picked up to a brisk gale. The last 50 miles to Farmington were in a drizzly rain mixed with sleet. We made it to our motel where it rained all night long. The normally well-maintained north entrance road to Chaco Canyon was starting to look a bit iffy.

The next day was overcast and rain threatened, but the morning was drama free with only a light dusting of snow on our way to the entrance to Chaco. If you’re going to visit Chaco Canyon you’ll no doubt read horror stories about how rough the road is leading to the canyon. Keep in mind the people fretting about the road are driving giant RVs held together with staples and chewing gum. You may lose a kitchen cabinet or an ill-considered propane tank. If you are driving a car or truck you’ll be fine. Unless it has rained five days straight before you arrived.

Turning off Highway 550, the first 8 miles to Chaco Canyon are paved and then the road turns into wide, graded dirt. This section was very muddy and CT put her Jeep in 4-wheel low and locked the front and rear differentials. She couldn’t go very fast because the Jeep wanted to spin into the ditch at the slightest sign of ham-fisted steering. Down hills were exciting; the Jeep kind of drifted to the bottom in a semi-controlled slide. The mud wasn’t deep, only a few inches, but it was like driving on ice covered with ball bearings and oil.

We saw two other vehicles on our 23-mile ride and one of them was stuck in a ditch. CT is a big believer in recovery gear so she has straps and chains onboard at all times. Unfortunately this means we have to stop and help people who get stuck in a mud bog. The guy was so glad to see us. We came to a gentle stop 30 feet past the deepest part of the mud hole. “You got a rope?” I asked Mr. Stucky.

“No I sure don’t,” he said. I gave a dejected look at the mud.

“Do you guys have anything we can use?” he asked.

“Yeah, we got something.” I stepped into the mud and pulled CT’s clean ARB tow strap out of its clean zipper case.

“I think if you can pull me back onto the road I’ll be ok. I was going too fast and spun out.”

I was only half listening to Stucky.  All I could think of was that this means we have to get CT’s ARB tow strap muddy with this sticky goo and then I’ll have to clean it later.

Walking was hard due to the mud sticking to our boots and the slipperiness, but we managed to connect our nice, clean, tow strap to Stucky’s SUV and pulled his rig backwards towards a less muddy area. Stucky’s mini SUV didn’t want to leave the ditch and it crabbed along spinning wheels and slinging mud for 100 feet before it popped out of the rut and onto what passed for the road. I started to wind up the tow strap when Stucky, sensing my disappointment, said, “Here, let me get that. No need for you to get any muddier.” I was muddy already, but I handed Stucky the strap. I wanted him to feel like he had a stake in not getting stuck again. As Stucky coiled the ARB tow strap mud oozed between each wrap. We were only a few miles to the campground from this point.

Once you make it to Chaco Canyon the roads are paved so we had no trouble finding the ranger station or our campsite. The place was nearly deserted. Stucky’s little teardrop trailer was the only other camper at Chaco that day. Fast moving clouds scudded from west to east bringing alternate periods of sunshine, snow, rain and hail. During a sunny spell we set our Campros tent up on the nice, raised tent platforms provided to each camping spot. The raised tent spots are built from pressure treated 8×8 beams laid out in a square totaling 14 feet by 14 feet. The squares were filled with nice, soft dirt and we were damn near glamping, you know? I guess if I were more observant, the tie down clevises screwed into the pressure treated lumber would have given me a hint about wind speeds in Chaco Canyon.

We watched the looping, 15-minute Chaco Canyon video at the ranger station’s little movie theater and then decided to set up and get our junk sorted out. It was windy and cold but we had plenty of warm clothing to wear. CT brought along 6 jackets, 7 hats, and 3 duffle bags full of thermal underwear. The tent was heaving and snapping; it took two people to hold it still long enough to assemble the thing. The temperature started dropping as soon as the sun went down. A campfire was out of the question in this wind so we made our bed, ate a little cold-cut snack for dinner, drank hot, Dancing Goats coffee and sat at opposite sides of the tent holding the corners down.

Moving all the heavy gear to the perimeter of the Campros tent seemed to keep it from blowing over. We were able to snuggle together in the sleeping bag and kept from freezing, which was the whole reason I wanted to go camping with CT in the first place. We saw 27 degrees that night and the wind never stopped blowing. The next day was slightly warmer and the sun was peeking out from the clouds, but it was even windier.

Due to the weather all the ranger presentations were cancelled. We signed up for a Chaco tour led by a Navajo business called Navajo Tours USA. We used these guys before at the Bisti Badlands and they are great fun. The tour started at 10 a.m. and we went to each condominium and wandered around while our guide told us about the different stone patterns and construction details of the buildings. Usually Chaco great houses have a basement level and many of the places we were walking had filled in with dust and sand over the preceding thousand years.

Above the basement there were three or four stories. Each level was accessed by a ladder from the level below. This system continued on until you reached the roof. The floors were made from large wood beams, called vigas in Spanish.  Over the beams were placed smaller sticks and an adobe floor. The vigas hauled to Chaco came from the mountains many miles away. I figure there must have been some sort of money or economy that would have allowed workers to drag those beams and still be able to sustain a living wage.

The walls of the condos were fairly thick. Starting at the bottom the walls were three feet thick or more. The walls tapered as they rose, becoming thinner floor-by-floor.  Top-floor walls might only be one foot thick. Originally, the inner walls were plastered smooth with some sort of lime coating. In a few spots you could still see the factory stucco. There were windows that let light into the rooms.  Inner rooms were dark but they had openings that aligned with outer windows that allowed outside light to penetrate several rooms deep. The outside windows had wooden shutters for winter use.

The winds, strong already, were picking up and at times you’d be blown off balance. Each gust brought a stinging blast of sand and my eyes were getting full of grit. The Chaco people situated their buildings according to astronomical events. Usually one long, straight wall aligned with the rising sun at the solstices. Sometimes the wall pointed towards a particular star. The building was a giant calendar.

There is a lot more to the Chaco culture, the long, straight roads they built, where their food came from, and why the city was abandoned after only a few hundred years, but it was late in the afternoon and getting colder. The wind was so strong I couldn’t hear our guide very well. Light hail was falling and wisps of snowflakes juked and stutter stepped in the air. As much as I enjoyed the lecture I was glad when it was over. I like it outside but there is such a thing as too much outdoors. We went back to the campsite to have a little hot tea.

Camp was a disaster. Our Campros tent looked like a downed weather balloon. Tent poles had broken, stakes were pulled out and the rain fly was detached and flapping in the breeze. Inside the tent everything was covered in dirt blown in through the screened roof.  We tried to get the tent propped back up but when I pulled on it things started ripping. We managed to get the rain fly back over the wreckage and placed large boulders on the corners to hold it in place. It was snowing again. There was nothing to be done with the wind blowing so we went to the ranger station and loitered. I bought a ceramic coffee cup with a Chao Canyon logo; it was good to be out of the wind.

By 7 p.m. the wind eased up a little and we went back to camp to try to salvage what we could. Our first chore was emptying the Jeep before it got dark. The idea being if we couldn’t fix the tent we could retreat to the Jeep and sleep in the back. Sure it would be cramped but at least we had a heater in the car. And the car wouldn’t blow over. Maybe.

We managed to get the tent propped back up with the short, broken poles. The short poles made every other dimension wrong. The main ridge pole had a huge S curve and there were wrinkles all over the place. It wasn’t a thing of beauty. Besides the broken poles, the upwind corners were ripped where the tent stake loops attach. We propped heavy stuff in those corners to hold the tent’s shape. Next we cleaned up all the sand as best we could and finally got organized enough to have another cold dinner and hot coffee. A campfire was out of the question because neither of us wanted to bother.  In retrospect, when we left that morning we should have lowered the tent and placed rocks on the rain fly to hold it down. I believe it would have survived without a problem. I have no gripe against the tent: it went through a hurricane.

The jury-rigged tent stayed up all night long and by morning the sun was out and it was a relatively warm 40 degrees. Blue sky shined in through our open tent door and the wind was a gentle breeze. If our reservations were made just two days later we would have had a totally different feel for Chaco Canyon. It would have been nice Chaco Canyon instead of mean Chaco Canyon. The muddy road had dried up and was now passable by standard automobile. The campground started filling up as we packed our gear. Old Joe would have folded up the battered tent with the broken poles and torn corners, taken it home and stored it for 43 years thinking he was going to fix it one day. New Joe tossed it in the dumpster.

Those long-ago Chaco people had it much better in their thick stone buildings. Maybe the climate was different then, but I suspect not that much different. And it was an unusual weather pattern that saw all the other campers cancel their reservations leaving only Stucky, his dog and us in the entire joint.  The campgrounds were nice with clean bathrooms, flush toilets and heat, but no showers. We never did get to see all the buildings because it was so windy and cold. CT and I want to back to Chaco Canyon and explore more but maybe next time we’ll go when the weather is more clement.


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Charles Darwin, Alive and Well

You know those signs that tell you not to drive into flooded areas?

Every time I’d see one, I always wondered about the target audience.  I mean, who would be stupid enough to drive into a flooded area?  And if they were that stupid…well, maybe ol’ Darwin had the right idea.


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Based on the cover photo, you may have already guessed where this story is going.  I don’t have to look very far to find someone stupid enough to “enter when flooded.”  I see that guy in the mirror every morning when I shave.

You see, there’s a creek that flows across the dirt road out to the West End Gun Club.   I’ve been driving across it for close to 40 years now.  Most of the year, it’s a dry creek bed. After a rainy spell, we’ve had times when it was so obviously flooded I wouldn’t attempt to cross it.  Most of the time.  But other times when the water was flowing, it didn’t look bad enough or deep enough to keep me from taking a chance.  I mean, what could go wrong?

I guess I’m one of those guys who has to urinate on the electric fence to see for himself.  Yep, I finally got stuck, and stuck good.  I always figured with my all wheel drive Subie I could get out of anything.  But you know, AWD ain’t the same as 4WD.    Something I learned today.

When I heard the underside of the Subie hit the ground on the ledge (that was now more of a bank than a ledge), it hit hard.  I felt it as much as heard it.  I was in trouble.  I tried to back out, but I knew from the downward facing hood the Subie’s butt was in the air and I could feel the front wheels spinning in the water.  I was balanced on the bank, and I could feel the car rocking and pivoting slightly to the right.  It was like being in a formulaic movie or a bad dream when a car has gone out of control and is hanging over a cliff.  I opened the door and the bank was directly under the opening, and as I looked at the ground, the bank was eroding.  In the wrong direction.  Water started coming over the door sill and into the car.

I beat a hasty exit out the passenger door.   Other folks going to the range, wondering if they could cross, had stopped and were watching me.   I had set the example.  The spectators tried to help by pulling down on the rear bumper.   It did no good.  I was high sided, and if anything, the car was moving more toward the stream, which was starting to look like Niagara Falls.  Yikes.

I called the Auto Club, but they put me on hold.  The bank continued to give way under my Subie, so I called 911.  They took my info and I never heard from them again, nor did anybody show.  You know the old saying…when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.  The other spectators drifted away.  I was on my own.

Then a miracle occurred.  Good buddy Lee, who I met for the first time this morning, came by in a Jeep.  A real Jeep.  With a winch.  We connected (literally and figuratively), but it was no good.  As the winch did its thing, it dragged the Jeep toward the Subie.  Lee and I looked at my  situation.  Lee put boulders in front of the Jeep’s wheels, and the winch dragged them along, too.  “If I could hook up to another vehicle,” Lee said, “we could make this work.”

Then the second miracle occurred.  Another newly-met good buddy named Aaron rolled up in a big Dodge pickup.  He hooked up to Lee’s Jeep, Lee hit the winch button, and just like that (with some God-awful undercarriage scraping and grinding), I was free.   For a few seconds, I thought my future held a commission as a U-boat commander, but no more.  Lee and Aaron, wherever you are, thanks much!


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ExNotes Review: Berk’s Jeep Wrangler Review

You know you’re scraping the bottom of the content barrel when you start reviewing the reviews on your own website. It’s lame, I know, but Berk’s recent Jeep review, while mostly positive, lacked the context that a long time Jeep owner can bring to the table. In short, Berk felt the Jeep was fun but several flaws kept it from being a car he would actually buy. I use the word car on purpose because if you compare the Jeep Wrangler to a car it will lose every time.

One of Berk’s observations was that the two-door Wrangler lacked interior space for normal day-to-day operations. Specifically, that the Jeep didn’t have enough room to carry his gear to the shooting range. It’s a valid complaint but that didn’t stop those guys on TV’s Rat Patrol show from harassing Rommel’s Africa Corps. There is a 4-door Wrangler version that provides a bit more room for gear but for this review-review we will stick to the 2-door.

Berk mentioned the ride quality of the Wrangler as being less than ideal. The Jeep Wrangler, like Harley Davidson, is trapped by its own success. Jeep customers want a Wrangler to be a Wrangler regardless of modern advancements. Wrangler 4×4 protocol requires straight axles front and rear and body-on-frame construction. These rules are inviolate and will remain as long as there is a Jeep Wrangler. If Jeep came out with a unibody, independently sprung Wrangler the true believers would be jumping out of 5th story windows. Continuity is more important than comfort.

Add up the short wheelbase, heavy unsprung axle weight, relatively light sprung weight and you get a choppy, rough ride. Jeep has steadily improved the ride of the Wrangler through the years. The difference between my 1992 Wrangler and a new Wrangler is shocking. The difference between a new Wrangler and any other new car is just as shocking. My 1992 can be painful on rough roads.  Sometimes you have to stop and walk.

Berk mentioned that the Wrangler felt a bit loose at speed. He was running 80 miles per hour! That kind of speed is unbelievable to me. The brick-shape of a Wrangler is the worse aerodynamic shape you could devise. The Wrangler would be more aerodynamic if you flipped it around and made the back the front. This horrible shape causes massive separations in the laminar flow around the Jeep body. Huge sections of air break away from the body buffeting the Jeep to and fro. If you managed to get a Wrangler going fast enough its paint would peel off from cavitation. All this turbulence causes noise and vibration; the Jeep is actually much quieter when driven in a perfect vacuum.

Berk noted the poor fit and finish of his rental car. The gas cap bezel was really ill-fitting which shouldn’t happen on a car with such a long production run. I’ll give him this one. Jeeps are put together sort of sloppily but you have to realize the abuse they will be put to. Once your Jeep has been rolled over on its side you will appreciate the fact that it looks no worse than before. Underneath the Jeep, where it matters, you’ll find tough running gear that can take a fair bit of abuse. Jeep owners regularly screw up their Wranglers with huge tires and massive suspension alterations then they try to break them over rocks. The Jeep running gear stoically put up with the stupidity. You can’t do this kind of stuff with a real car.

Berk felt that 16 miles to a gallon for a 4-cylinder Jeep was not great fuel economy. Remember, he was cruising 80 miles per hour. My 4-cylinder Wrangler gets around 15 miles to a gallon at 60 miles per hour. It doesn’t take a math teacher to figure out the fuel economy on the Wrangler has been greatly improved through the years. Unfortunately I can’t give you the gas mileage for my Jeep at 80 miles per hour because my 1992 won’t do 80 miles per hour.

Like a Harley owner, a Jeep owner becomes adept at making excuses for their Jeep. Also like a Harley you don’t get a normal consumer experience in a Jeep Wrangler. The car is a throwback; a living dinosaur that you can use to ply the dirt trails of America. The Wrangler is constructed like cars were in the 1940s with only the electronics modernized.

Buying a Wrangler for commuting is silly for all the reasons Berk mentioned in his review. However, if you live on a steep dirt road that gets snow in the winter a Wrangler makes sense. In 4-wheel low you’ll be amazed at the hills you can climb and the places you can get stuck. I think Berk summed it up nicely when he said the Wrangler is a fun car to drive but he wouldn’t want to own one. I agree with that sentiment, except I own one.


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A Colorado Jeep Story

On a recent secret mission to southeastern Colorado, the rental car agency at Denver International Airport was down to Nissans.  I hate Nissans, and I asked the rental car dude if anything else was available.  “Just a couple of Jeep Wranglers,” said dude responded.  Hmmm.  I always thought it might be cool to have a Jeep.  I could pretend I was Joe Gresh.

Yours truly, looking like Rambo (or maybe Joe Gresh) in the Denver International Airport rental car plaza.

“I’m in,” I said, and I was in in my very own Jeep Wrangler of the two-door turbocharged four persuasion.  Short.  Choppy.  Uncomfortable.  Gas guzzling.  But a lot of fun.  Gresh, I get it.  I want one.  Not enough to buy one, but enough to rent one again.

There’s a turbocharged 4-banger somewhere in there.

You can buy a Jeep with four engines this year:

      • The standard V-6 3.6 liter
      • The same V-6 with an electronic motor hybrid deal (it sounds on the Jeep site like it’s not an Al Gore eco thing, but more of an assist for rock crawling).
      • A turbocharged smaller four-banger (a price delete option, which is a nice way of saying it’s an option that lowers the price of the new Jeep).
      • A 392-cubic-inch hemi.  Just for grins I looked for a dealer online that had one of these $80K hemi Jeeps in stock, and I found one. It’s an $88K Jeep that gets 17 mpg on the highway and 13 in the city.   Here in the People’s Republik, gas is well over $6.00 per gallon.  Filling up my Subaru cost $95.12 yesterday.

My rental car had the turbo four banger and it still sucked fuel like a politician seeking campaign donations.  At first I thought it was not going to be so bad because the instrument info center said I was averaging over 20 miles per gallon, but when I got out on the freeway at 77 mph it said my instant fuel economy was in the “you’ve got to be kidding me” category. That little 4-banger was actually doing worse than what Jeep claimed the 392 Hemi would get.

My istantaneous fuel economy at the time I took this photo was 16 mpg. That was on cruise control at 77 mph. I never could get back to this screen.

I suppose I might as well get the negative stuff out of the way first.  For starters, fuel economy was atrocious.  But then, folks don’t buy Wranglers for their fuel economy.  And on that subject, I found that switching between screens to get the fuel economy info was tricky…tricky enough that I couldn’t find my way back to the instant fuel economy screen.  Maybe the Jeep genies thought I didn’t need to know.  Some things are better left unsaid, I suppose.

Another negative, which is maybe a positive, is that my Jeep felt gangly to me.  Not as in tattoos and gats, but as in unsteady on its feet and ready to tip over (think of me putting my pants on in the morning and you’ll get the picture).  Part of that was due to the Jeep’s height and its extremely tight turning radius (small steering wheel inputs made for huge course corrections, and on the freeway steering that barn door at nearly 80 mph it was all a bit unsettling).  On a dirt road, though, K turns become a thing of the past.  This thing can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change.  It can make a U-turn on a two lane road.

Monster fobs. Hard to lose. Easy to inadvertently activate.

The key fobs were huge, and I guess that’s okay, but I found I was unlocking the Wrangler or setting off the panic alarm damn near every time I put the key fobs in my pocket, or if I stuck my hand in my pocket to get my chapstick or anything else.

Cargo space?  As the Sopranos might say, fuhgeddaboutit.  The rental car dude folded the rear bench seat up, but it wouldn’t stay up, and even when it did, there really wasn’t any room for my gear.  You’re not going to be taking a lot of stuff with you in a two-door Wrangler.   That pretty much killed it for me as a rifle range car.  I wouldn’t be able to get all my shooting gear in there.

Wind noise is another issue.  Oddly, it didn’t bother me when I was driving, even at freeway speeds.  But no one could hear or understand me on a Bluetooth telephone conversation.  Two folks gave up altogether and just hung up.  Maybe that’s a good thing.

Seriously? This is the kind of fit and finish we get on an American legend, a descendent of the vehicle that helped us win World War II?

One last point…although the overall build quality seemed to be pretty good, Jeep lost me from a quality perspective with the fuel filler cap fit.  It looks like the production tolerances were either not met or they were assigned by an AutoCad jockey who went to the Doris Day school of mechanical design.

The good news?  Well, the good news is that there’s lots of good news.  I fell in love with my Jeep.  It was cool and I felt cool driving it.  And even though it was tall enough to make getting in and out difficult, I knew almost immediately I’d be renting one on my next secret mission.  I don’t need the Aston Martin and its machine guns, smoke dispensers, and ejection seat.  For my secret missions, I want a Jeep.

Man, that Jeep was fun.  Once I got over the difference in feel between it and  a regular car, I felt invincible.  Seriously.  I mean, I’m a 71-year-old Jewish kid from New Jersey with a different doctor for damn near every organ in my body, but I still felt invincible in my Wrangler.   I was driving directly into a Colorado hailstorm east of the Rocky Mountains at close to 80 mph, but I was in a Jeep.  Gresh, I get it.   It’s a power thing.

I am Rambo. Bring it on.

After the hail passed and I was back on the road, I found another plus:  The headlights actually lit up the road, even on low beam, and that’s something I had not experienced in any rental car in a while.

Imagine that: Headlights that actuallly work!

So I was out there in cow country and the center of an ag world, doing my secret mission thing and having fun like I always do.   Way off in the distance from the secret mission du jour there’s a couple of hills called Two Buttes (it’s actually one hill with two peaks).  I had always wanted to ride out to Two Buttes and see what it was all about.  I knew a Jeep wasn’t really essential, but the combination of longer days (more sunlight), the draw of a place unexplored, the dirt roads to get there, and my Jeep worked its magic.

Headed into the Two Buttes State Wildlife Area.

From the main road, Two Buttes looks like it would be easy to find and easy to find my way around.  Like elections, though, what you think you’re going to get and what you actually get aren’t often the same.   When I got closer to the Two Beauts, I found the area was a maze of dirt roads laid out in no particular order.  The guys I was working with on my secret mission told me about a hidden lake, and my objective was to find it and grab a few photos.  Waze was sketchy as hell out there in farmroadland, but I didn’t care.  I was in a Jeep.

Ah, success. The lake and the Jeep, as seen through my iPhone’s wide angle lens.
Another photo of the lake, or pond, or whatever it actually is called.
A beauty shot of the Jeep Wrangler.

I explored, I shot a bunch of iPhone photos, and I had a good time.  I want a Jeep.  I’m not going to get one.  But I want one.

My last photo of the day, leaving the Two Buttes State Wildlife Area.

Maybe it would be even more fun with the 392 Hemi.   I did a bit more research, and I learned that Jeep only introduced the 392 Hemi this year, in 2022.  It seems that the new Ford Bronco (you can read our mini-review of it here) will be offered with a V8 in their Bronco Raptor package and Chrysler felt compelled to counter.  Hey, whatever floats your boat.  I found this 392 Hemi Jeep review and I thought you might find it interesting.

A Jeep.  Who’da thought.  A Jeep.  Man, it was fun.


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Flipper Nation: How To Ruin a Fun Hobby By Squeezing Every Dime That You Can Out Of It

I realize we all have to make a living. Food has gone up, gas costs more and the rent is too damn high. Look, I have nothing against businessmen, as long as they play it straight and don’t scam customers. Go for it. Make all the money you can; see if I care. No, this story is about how all of us grease monkey types have forsaken the cool and the funky to become a bunch of soulless stock fluffers: a nation of pump-and-dump Hobby-Hawkers concerned only with what they can extract from the other, equally soulless fluffers.

Take Jeep YJ’s for instance. The square-headlight YJ has been the entry-level vehicle for 4-wheel drive buffs for the last 30 years. Shunned by other Jeep owners, despised for the simple crime of having headlights that actually align with their bodywork, Jeep YJ’s were the bottom rung. You could pick up a running YJ for a couple thousand dollars and hit the trails later that day. Light weight and simple suspension made the YJ very capable off-road and easy to fix when it broke down.

I bought my ’92 YJ for $2800 about ten years ago and the thing has been running good-ish ever since. If you believe the YJ groups I habituate, YJ’s are $20,000 rigs now. I see people posting up rusty old YJ’s for $6000/$8000 dollars. The users of YJ groups love it. Just sitting on their hands their investment (note: It’s no longer a Jeep or something they enjoy; it’s just an investment, like oil futures) goes up several thousand dollars a day. When someone online asks what their YJ is worth, which is every second question after which oil to use, the shills pipe in with ridiculous amounts of money that they themselves would never pay. All in service of bumping up the YJ’s stock price.

I could understand it better if Jeep YJ’s were sort of rare, but Jeep made 685,000 of the things over a nearly 10-year production run. They are everywhere, in fields, rusting in driveways, stacked in Jeep specific junkyards. That doesn’t stop the flippers from trying to run up the price. Everyday the imagined value of a Jeep YJ goes up another few hundred dollars. We may have missed out on Bitcoin but we’re darn sure not going to sell our clapped out old Jeeps for less than the price of a 2022 model. This money grab turns a fun hobby into just another IPO stock offering, something to own for its upside potential, not because you enjoyed it.

It’s the same with old motorcycles. The prices people are asking for any minor part that fits a vintage Japanese bike are just silly. I’m not immune to fluffer-fever. Prices for old Z1 Kawasaki’s have gotten so high I’m thinking of selling mine to cash in before the bubble bursts. My funky old motorcycle has turned into a savings account. And that’s the truly sad part: I enjoyed building the Z1 but now have to worry about where I park it due to its inflated value. I was going to ride it to Mexico with Berk but what if it gets stolen? The bike is no longer fun. In my mind’s eye it has become a stack of dollar bills waiting to be blown away by the slightest wind.

I know I’m ranting here but just once I’d like to log into a vintage motorcycle forum and not be bombarded with Internet shills asking for valuations or offering Jeeps and motorcycles for sale at stratospheric numbers. Old Jeeps, motorcycles and for that matter, vintage cars should mean more to us than how much return on the investment we can get from them. They should reach back into our memories and emotions; they should recall hot-metal smells and loves lost or found; they should be valued and not commoditized.

I guess what I really want is to remember the fun we had with our old cars and bikes before it all became a race to the top. I know the air will rarify and these old clunkers will become like casino chips: traded but never loved except for their monetary properties. You know, I used to hate the way people chopped up vintage Japanese motorcycles and turned them into goofy looking Brat style bikes but now I’m having second thoughts. Maybe by so thoroughly destroying the value of their motorcycles the Brat Butchers are actually saving the old bike’s true value as a motorcycle.


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Read more about the Z1 and other projects here.

South by South Bend: Part 1

As much as I enjoy concrete work I need to take a break now and then. I ran out of mud for the back patio (164 bags, missed it by 10 bags!) so I decided to get my old South Bend 6’ lathe up and running.

My Pop bought the South Bend way back in the late 1960’s. I was just a kid but I remember riding in Pop’s Chevy ¾ ton, picking up the machine and unloading it at our house. It was and still is the heaviest thing I ever want to move. We were lucky in that the South Bend came with a crap load of attachments: a full set of collets, three steady rests, a 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck and hundreds of tool bits were thrown in with the lathe.

Pops gave me the lathe 14 years ago. He said he was never going to use it again and he needed more room. I took the lathe down to The Florida Keys, where we lived at the time, and it went under water several times due to hurricanes. The motor was mounted lower on the lathe frame so it was lost to the elements. The rest of the lathe sat higher and was ok. All I did in The Keys was work so the South Bend sat for many years and I dragged it out to New Mexico in The Big Haul Ryder truck.

With the Covid, stay-at-home orders I decided now is the time to get the old machine running again. Back when we first got the lathe I asked my dad, “What does it do?” He told me “Everything”. He said, “You can make another lathe with a lathe!” Pops was a good machinist and he showed me the basics of operation. I was cutting threads on the South Bend within a few weeks.

The South Bend came with a hokey, home-made motor/pulley setup that we were going to change 50 years ago but never got around to it. The pulley set up is ugly but it works and that’s probably why it stayed. This go-round I’m leaving it as is. The next guy can come up with a better system. Because with lathes there is always a next guy: they don’t wear out.

The old motor had a wider mounting bolt footprint and one hole of the 4 mounting holes was used for an adjuster bolt. I re-drilled the plate to suit the new motor and tapped the holes for 5/16” bolts.

For the adjusting bolt I used the existing motor mount holes but made a bar to go underneath. The new bar extends past the motor plate to line up with the adjuster bolt. It looks a little better than the previous setup. I need a few parts to finish the new motor installation so that will have to wait.

The South Bend is a 6” lathe but at some point in the past it was jacked up to an 8” lathe (swing over V-ways).  The 1” spacer blocks look so well made they may be factory parts. I’m leaving them.

One of the nice things about this lathe is that it has not been abused. The thing is probably 70 years old and V-ways are smooth and unscarred from work falling out of the chuck and smacking into them. This means that a good machinist ran the thing.

That is, it was unscarred until I got my teen-age meat hooks on it. That gouge in the carriage was put there in the early 1970s by yours truly. I was cutting threads on a shaft, or maybe it was a taper, and the carriage self-fed into the chuck making a loud banging sound. I was confused; Pops was not happy and reamed me out. I never ran the carriage into the chuck again.

The forward/reverse switch is shot so I am replacing it with a toggle. Only because I have a 4-pole, double throw, center off toggle in stock. I’ve wanted to use that oddball switch forever. I’m also relocating the switch and wiring the motor 240-volt so that the 6000-watt solar-powered inverter can start the motor easier. With the old set up you had to reach over and between the spinning belts and pulleys to access the switch. It was sure a thing to keep you on your toes. Front mounting the switch will be mildly safer.

A lathe is one of the handiest machine tools you can own. The old ones are slightly clunkier to operate and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about operating one. I’m sure YouTube is full of how-to lathe videos so I’ll brush up before I start making scrap metal.

While I wait for parts I’ll start cleaning the beast. Part 2 will cover the motor mounting, belts and wiring.


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404 Not Found: Blowing The Lid Off

If you haven’t already joined the Facebook page, Fans of Motorcyclist Magazine’s Washed Up Writers, I encourage you to do so. FOMMWUW is a place for former Motorcyclist mag writers to post their new stuff and for fans to see that their old favorites did not die just because Bonnier killed the motorcycle magazine business in America. One of the washed up writers posted a helmet review from his site. The review was ok. It covered fit and finish, noise and weight. Conclusions were drawn but that’s not what I took away from the review: It was the inspiration for this blog.

Way back when moto-magazines still held thrall over the motorcycle advertising landscape writers were professional and paid fairly well. One of those writers, Dexter Ford, wrote the most important motorcycle magazine article since…since I don’t know when. The story was called Blowing The Lid Off and the amount of time and money spent researching this one story dwarfs what we Internet bloggers can devote to a hundred topics.

Blowing The Lid Off combined applied scientific research, traffic accident studies and logical thinking to destroy the long held belief among motorcycle riders that a more expensive helmet was a better helmet. Ford didn’t mince around with fit and finish. He cut right to the chase: How well does the helmet protect your head in a motorcycle crash. New ways of testing helmets were devised. Whole new parameters were used instead of the old metrics. Ford’s story changed the way helmets were rated by proving that stronger helmets weren’t always better in a motorcycle accident. One of the cheapest helmets tested (Shark brand, if I remember correctly) protected a simulated human brain better than the most expensive brands available.

Rotational forces, multiple impacts, using statistical areas of contact instead of a fixed point on top, the story was complete and completely unheard of: A masterwork. Ford had so perfectly executed his Mona Lisa that Motorcyclist Magazine lost a huge amount of advertising money from (expensive) helmet manufacturers. The toxic corporate fallout from Blowing The Lid Off contaminated friendships, leaked emails and ultimately cost Ford his job at Motorcyclist. It was a real mess but that story is best told by those who were actually involved.

I met Dexter Ford on the Best Western Motel-Arkansas-Harley Ride boondoggle. (Even though I wrote about wheel spokes coming loose, that was not the story that soured The Motor Company on my writing). We had drinks and dinner at the schmoozefest portions of the ride. Shooting the breeze with Ford was so damn funny I actually had to beg him to stop as my uncontrollable laughing was making me look like a drunken idiot. The other moto-journos at the table must have thought I’d lost my mind.

Ford and I got along famously on that ride but we had a little falling out towards the end of the Best Western tour. He was a proponent of the sanctity of the writer’s craft. He believed it was a calling and the worthiest of all pursuits. I’ve always approached writing from the rear entrance and with not much respect for the act-of so I told him that digging a perfect ditch was just as valuable as anything I could ever type. I can be a jerk when I want to be.

After that, Ford was not exactly dead to me but the fun times and hilarious asides dried up. I probably should not have said the thing about the ditch but I’m a laborer at heart and will always take the side of the man in the hole.

I tried to find Blowing The Lid Off online but after 10 minutes of searching I could not find a link that worked. Maybe one of you guys can post up a link or it’s saved in an archive somewhere. Failing that, screen shots of the story could be uploaded somewhere safe. It would be a shame if the greatest investigative motorcycle writing ever disappeared from the moto-world.

The 100-Mile Loop

If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.

There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.

With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.

Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.

The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.

After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.

In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.

I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.

After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.

All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.


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