Good day, inmates and visitors, and welcome to Photos of the Week, ADVrider’s forum for great pictures. We start with a featured image that captured our editor’s attention right off the bat, with @igorshen resting on cliffs “high above Kane Creek during a three day visit to Behind the Rocks area in April.” That’s a 2003 KTM 526 EXC relaxing along with our correspondent. Kane Creek and Behind the Rocks are in the Moab area of Utah, but you knew that. We chose this as our featured image because of the drama, and the fact that igorshen managed to get the clouds to arrange themselves around him head so perfectly. If you gotta have clouds, it’s always best if they obey your wishes.

But @igorshen didn’t stop with one photo, so here are the others. We start with a lovely shot from Jacob’s Chair OHV trail, also in Utah.

Still on Jacob’s Chair OHV trail, this one at Bear’s Ears National Monument. (Here’s a shot of Bear’s Ears from America’s Public Broadcasting Service that show you how the place got its name– please come back after you’re checked it out.)

Below: “Slickrock and Hell’s Revenge outside Moab, Utah. After 3 days of stormy weather, La Sal mountains looked spectacular with a new coat of snow.”

And here is a shot of White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

Albanian Adventure

@Philipmat says the pavement in Albania, even on a major road, “sometimes just … ends, no matter what the GPS says (and Google Maps is woefully out of date with the pace of the country).” In this photo, he says, “me and two other tourists are trying to figure out if this patch of rock is just temporary or it’s passable. It wasn’t for them, and judged it to be passable for me.” That’s a 2021 Honda NC750X DCT he was riding a few days ago when the photo was shot.

Philipmat says it was “rough for a barely adv bike and on street tires. But it also led to the discovery of the ruin of King Zog’s Vila [below], the one and only king of Albania (1922-1939).”

The road turned rougher and rougher and was even collapsed at one point, so I was forced to return.

But on the way back, I was treated to the delicious spring water from the Queen Mother Spring – named so in the honor of King Zog’s mother. Such springs are frequent in the mountains and a good source of clear water for the locals; and for the occasional exhausted AdvRider member who battled a tough road on unsuitable tires.

Gravel and cobbles, until …

Here are some shots by @nick949eldo of his 1976 Moto Guzzi Convert, taken in 2018. “I took a spin into Northern Ontario along part of the Trans-Canada Adventure Trail, north of Sudbury, along the Wahnapitae River. It was mostly easy going gravel and cobbles but nothing that the Convert couldn’t handle …

“Until I reached this washout where a flash flood had removed all the roadbed surrounding the culvert. Sorry about the picture quality – it’s a screen shot from video.”

“Fortunately, a four wheeler had created a temporary road across the streambed below the culvert. It’s amazing what these old bikes can cope with when you don’t have much choice.” This is another screen shot.

“After the fun of the TCAT section, I looped back across to Wawa, then down the Lake Superior coast, stopping near Mamainse Harbour for a view of the lake before a well-earned beer in a motel in Sturgeon Falls.”

As Homer Simpson would happily say, “Ahhh, beer!”

Not a real deer

– except for the antlers, which are real, says @Kiwiscoot, who took the picture below and those that follow a few weeks ago while touring on his 2018 Royal Enfield Himalayan (with a Himalayan Tools big bore 477 cc kit and TEC cam). The deer below the antlers is a chainsaw carving “from the tree stump where the tree grew.” Photos all taken in New Zealand.

Trip was to Motunau and that is Motunau Island (in the photo) which lies close to the coastline of Pegasus Bay north of Christchurch, New Zealand. Photos are of the coast line and it is a beautiful quiet road with lots of twisties. All in all a great day out.

Let’s go to school!

Not this one, though. “This school is across the street from the parking lot where I park for work” says @Drip. “Located in Wellston, Missouri, it has apparently been abandoned since 1962. Not so much an adventure just my daily commute; however, driving in this part of the world is a bit of an adventure every day, with the way the traffic moves, hah!”

Rural tacos

@Mattyj2001 says he lives in a “very rural area in Southern California,” but even so there is an “embarrassment of taco riches” in his town, which has “not one, but two taco shops.” He says he gets to do a little adventuring on fire roads every Tuesday. “This is Buzzy with Cahuilla Mountain in the background. Just around the bend from here is a chunk of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, also a fun ride on non-taco days.” That’s a 2022 BMW R1250GS enjoying the view, and maybe later, a taco or two.

Looks like a nice place to go for tacos. Incidentally, the news this week is of a Mexico City taco shop, Tacos El Califa de León, that was awarded a Michelin Star on Wednesday – the first tacos-only place to get such a coveted award.

Museum quality

Here’s a shot by @The Bear, taken 15 years ago in a museum “somewhere in Germany,” possibly Munich. The bike at the top is an Aprilia 6.5, he says, but he has “no idea” what the bike below it is.

Along the Rhine

We finish up today with three more shots from @The Bear, who was enjoying a cruise along the Rhine in Germany “about 20 years ago” with a motorcycle that he says he can’t recall. Well, that’s okay; we have the pictures, and that’s what counts. “The first photo shows two random blokes queuing for a ferry at Zeil. They told me about some excellent roads on the other side of the river.”

Below, “some other bloke’s bike” parked “in the approach to one of the many castles along the Rhine.”

And below, our final image for the week, taken with a borrowed Harley-Davidsson in the background “to show that the Germans actually acknowledge that there are such things as motorcycles with sidecars! Unfortunately that means you pay extra for parking.”

And with that, we’ll call it a day here in ADVrider-land, at least for Photos of the Week (the rest of the outfit never stops working). Thanks for stopping by – we hope you enjoyed your stay, and come again! Click below to submit images. Everyone benefits when you do.