Well I headed up to Atchison this Sunday. Thanks to everyone's advice on stuff it was a less exciting in a good away. Well most of it. This area is South West of Atchison on the Missouri side just back up in the hills. Its a step up from flat gravel in the river bottoms but really its just same with inclines.
South West of Atchison - I decided to hit this area between 45 & 116 & State Road M.
I got off of M here at East Dye Store Road. Nice rolling hills and easy stuff. I think Kansas Backroads calls this "cheeseburger" stuff. Fine with me. Practiced going slow and fast. Faster is easier, unless the gravel gets weird or the next turn goes off camber. ABS is much better on breaking but it does allow for slides. Getting used to that. Actually got up on the bike on a few hills. Started using front brake. Makes a big diff too. Leaning on the outer peg. Can see why the big windshield scare people (right at the neck, nice) and my tank bag will be small and out of the way (not that I want any more kids this late in the game). Its great that abs can be disabled and I know now why people complain about it coming back on after every stop for water or looking around.
Just more hills. Note the most technical area up here is that crossing road. I was throwing rock and doing a bit of spin to get going. Other than that this entire area up there between 20St and 45 is a great easy place for learning to ride on gravel. Doing some wheel spinning for fun. Lockups.
46th Street over South Sugar Creek. I really like this road. You have to pay attention, but you can look at the scenery too if you slow down some. Lots of shade on this at 10am to stop in.
Later I did state highways to Excel Springs again, south on Highway 0. This time I redid Wolf Hallow w/o abs and its much less of a pucker and was going faster and standing for most of it. However I got too confident and decided to do the descent on Reynolds. The gravel was not as nice as wolf or Atchison area and some off camber and steep declines with twists hidden by trees. A few "holy shit just do it" moments letting the bike just take some corners going way down into blind areas had me happy to see pavement. Both Blain and Slachs looked pretty steep too but I was mentally done with gravel from Reynolds and did the rest paved. Blain looked like 45 degrees for 2 blocks going up. Of course that's to some guy who was still sweating it. The whole time I was remembering a line from youtube on some vid in there by some guy on a 990, "no matter what you will always get down, haha".
256 miles, 20 gravel and at home at 2:01pm.
Still need to get a good pair of boots. I did order a tank bag that fits the tanks on this thing (wolfman exp lite) and doesn't block standing. I really like this 80/20 stuff. Not that I am 80/20 more like 95/5.