I believe this years camp out in the desert was the 15th. year it has been held. We missed the first year and last year but have attended every other year. The Rally is held every New Year at San Diego's County Park at Agua Caliente Springs. Indoor/ outdoor hot spring pools are in the park.
We planned on heading out by noon Friday but a battery issue gave us a late start. I recently charged the sidecar battery but it suddenly konked out on the sidecar rig so had to swap it out with a battery from my other bike.
The County has upgraded areas of the park since the last time we were here in 2008. A new pavilion , fire pit and seat walls have been added in the group area.
This years gathering was not for the faint of heart as the night time temperatures were down to 28 degrees with highs in the lower 50's. Luckily the days were sunny and an abundance of firewood was brought in. Our hosts, Kelly Pixton and Kevin Kempton (with help from all the Kempton Family and others) kept us all well fed throughout the weekend with more food than anyone could eat. 
Darian seated with our friends Murray & Denise. Murray is a Wyoming native. Growing up a couple hundred miles from my old stomping grounds.
Nice view of the new pavilion, fire pit and mountains. I attended the annual Moonlight Trail Hike which is a night time 2+ mile hike around the mountain in the back ground. 13 of us braved the cold & darkness to do the night time hike on Friday night. Others prefer to do it in the day light when it is a bit safer. No guts no glory?
Our humble camping site. A number of the attendees drive hundreds of miles here so some decided to arrive in 4 wheeled machines rather than 2 wheeled machines. We elected to drive over with the side car rig. Warm camping gear was a must. We kept nice and warm despite the 20 degree temperatures. The sidecar allows us to bring a lot of gear. (whether we needed it or not)
This KTM astounded me with it's wonderful starting / electrical system. The owner must have cranked on it for 45 minutes before he finally gave up trying to get it started. The battery still seemed to have a lot of juice.
This custom modified Uni-Go trailer was great. Aircraft quality construction and made a great table too. I watched the build on a Blog and saw it in person for the first time. This bike had a lot of great / trick modifications done to it. The trailer had a heavy duty damper to keep things in check. much more functional than a stock Uni-Go Trailer.
A stock Uni-Go trailer.....
This stock 1973 long wheel base R75/5 showed up. That is how my other bike started life.
A shot just as the sun dropped behind the mountains at 4:00 pm or so...this years camp out was a great success. Got to see quite a few old friends and made some new friends too. People came and went throughout the weekend. Some came in Thursday and left before we arrived late Friday. Appeared to be around 50 people in attendance this year. Some years have brought in 80 - 100 people. I'm sure the cold weather definitely kept some folks closer to home.
We're already looking forward to next year! Hopefully it will be a little warmer. We had one or two years with a bit of rain, a couple of years with a lot of wind and this year was probably the coldest in my memory. Thankfully we had no wind to speak of this year. That would have really been cold.
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