30 Days on a 5th Gen

Incredible, what an adventure, yes Lolo pass is epic when it's warm and dry. Do you have this all down in a book you wrote? excellent reading and the photography is top notch. And now you're getting into my neck of the woods. on a side note, ya gota love centerstands? That was odd though reading no tire your size, Wow.

 

I usually shoot with my Pentax DSLRs, but for travel I use a Panasonic Linux DMC-LX7. Great little compact camera. A poor man's Leica if you will.

 

I've got routes mapped up now, I'll post when I get off work.

 

I went back a couple days ago and sorta by your description did a half ass attempt of locating where you went. I like maps so it wasn't a problem, other than you really did take when you could the back way Nice.. Here's :cheersaf: to the rest of the adventure

 

Thanks so much for sharing this great adventure, I truly enjoyed it.
I think that I actually felt the rain and cold but really enjoyed the food and noticed my arms getting cramped on the wet gravel roads. Damn, that was fun!

 

that's funny the most common size tire is a 180/55/17 yet no tires= sounds like the shops where a rip off- the same thing happens around here- I say buy only long lasting tire-only!:beguiled:

 

Incredibly familiar with a lot of the photos you took on the Canuckistan side of the border ... I know the area quite well.

Up towards Rossland and Nelson is gorgeous. Too bad you went so late in the year - Banff / Lake Louise / Jasper are amazing.

 

I was looking at your pictures and lamenting the pictures I didn't take. Some of the best stops, the most beautiful scenery and the most memorable moments are enjoyed in the moment and those can be difficult to capture in an image. Sometimes I will stop, meet someone, eat something or just stand and stare and later I think "I should have taken a picture."

 

Oh man, went back through the read, always better the second or third time around anyway, funny what one misses and picks up on lateron. the part with the trail adventure, I was sure when you mention swinging bridge, with your photo skills there'd be a cool shot, but no....:topsy_turvy: So not to take anything away from your talents I added a link here http://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/AS9RT5AV1RSbkUXhhKb3Pw/o.jpg for those curious like me.

 

You know, you're right. I have a picture of it, but I was shooting straight into the sun. If it makes it any better, the last photo was taken from the bridge.

 

Unlike my riding reports, this is a great one. I will finish reading this in the near future and will post some comments.

 

The morning dawned like clockwork, no more like dish detergent. I am no morning person, but being awake and ready for a full day of riding is the nearest to bubbly to which I'll come. The birds twittered cheerfully, or since I'm at a KOA, the bird sound clips twittered digitally over the hidden speakers in the trees. Another day of adventure beckoned.



Rolling back through Kamiah, I headed towards Lewiston. It really was a beautiful morning. Lewiston arrived with a minimum of fuss and talking with a couple of BMW riders, I decided to drop through Hell's Canyon down to Enterprise. What a fantastic road! Climbing out of Washington, the road just cut back and forth on itself like a high score in Snake. Crossing into Oregon didn't dull things, either. Just a great rider's road with beautiful scenery to boot.







The one downside was that it went down to one lane and the delay was about 15 minutes of sitting in the hot sun. I always feel sorry for the flagman (person). That job would not work for this guy!. Boredom would kick in, I'd give the waiting dtivers a coin toss and hand them a lance for a little one lane jousting.

Arriving in Enterprise, OR, the clouds loomed ominously and rain was starting to come down to my level. What a great time to get lunch and wait out the rain. I chose Thai Enterprise. I had the Pineapple Fried Rice and it was delicious. More about this place in a later report.

Once fed, I exited to find the rain clouds now fleeing in terror back to the mountains. I headed down to Joseph to check out Lake Wallowa and met the couple on BMW's I had spoken to in Lewiston. Enterprise and Joseph were both pretty cool cities, Joseph was a bit too touristy for me, but Enterprise had a very honest feel to it.



Oregon agrees with me. I absolutely love all the older vehices still being driven, especially as work trucks. I met plumbers driving clean old Ford F100s, contractors pulling trailers with straight old Chevy C20s, numerous Chevy LUV's (I have a special affinity for small pickups), and all sorts of 80's cars still on the road. I've nothing against the 50's and 60's classics that everyone else seems to prefer, but a 57 Chevy and a 67 Camaro are starting to feel a bit cliched to me. I love 70s and 80s cars and trucks. A Chevette? Sure. AMC Gremlin? Saw one and was jealous. Chrysler Newport? Well, I don't have my CDL.

Leaving Joseph, I headed over to La Grande, where I rode through Lehman Springs down into the Umatilla National Forest. My original plan had been to make it down to John Day to camp, but waiting out the rain burned too much daylight. At one point. I realized that I needed gas within 30 miles or so and the nearest gas station was 40 miles away, so I had to backtrack about 12 miles to one I had passed in Dale. When I got to the Dale station, it was closed, and had been since 5:00 PM. I sat outside the station for a while wondering what to do, when the owner of the station kindly walked down from his house, pumped me some gas (no self service in Oregon. Why? Not even the gas attendants know), and gave me a postcard and a short history of the gas station which had been open since 1921, I believe.

It was definitely too dark to make it to John Day now, so I had to backtrack another 15 miles to the Ukiah campground. It began to rain and cool off fast. It was quite the night, sleeping in a wet tent with the rain pouring down at a low temp of 33F.

Today's Takeaway: Oregon is alright (when it's warm)

 

Warmth. Dryness. Comfort. A crackling fire. A sizzling steak.

This is a list of things I did not have camping at Ukiah in Oregon. Having to set up my tent in the rain with not much tree cover, the inside was soaked. Thankfully, my air mattress is thick enough to keep me off of the wet tent floor. Morning came eventually, welcome for the daylight, unwelcome for rain still pummeling my immediate area. Once I juiced my tent and packed everything as quickly as I could, still in the rain, I waded my way back to the bike and set off once more, fording my way back to US 395. Turning south again, I passed the station at Dale, then continued onto Long Creek, there turning onto 402.

Things started changing up on 402, less “woodsy” and more sandy. This was a welcome change, because the forests of Oregon more or less looked like the forests of Idaho and Montana. In another welcome change, the sun was released from captivity and the rain and the roads dried up.




I didn't catch it on this picture, but there were about 20 cows crossing this bridge when I first came upon it.

Once I passed through Monument, the roads even became fun! Low brush meant it was easy to set up a corner, as I had a good sight line through it.





Fun was had all the way to Fossil. Fossil is a neat little town. I rolled down the road a bit to the John Day Fossil Beds. I was on my way up the trail to see if I could spy any fossils when I stumbled across this previously undiscovered fossil.



Buried just beneath the surface, it was a chance find, but it is obviously the well preserved trachea of a brontosaurus. Unfortunately, it's not public land, so I couldn't excavate it, strap it to the VFR and sell it to the Smithsonian for enough money to buy all of Oregon. What rotten luck.

While I was examining my find, a flash of red caught my eye, and that happened to be Scott? (I'm terrible with names) on his BMW R100. We talked a while and then went our separate ways.



Riding through Antelope was pretty neat, as I had been reading about the Rajneesh cult and how the town for a period of time in the 80's was named Rajneeshpuram. Before my time, but hard to believe that happened. Read up on the Rajneesh cult history, if you haven't. It's rather fascinating.

I headed up into Shaniko, where I stopped at a small store to purchase a can of Coke, lean against the bike, and soak in my dusty, Western, almost ghost town surroundings. Refreshed, (no, I haven't been bought off by Coca-Cola, although, Coke, if you're reading this, I'm all for it!), I set up towards The Dalles, on an amazing road. What a brilliant road! Great pavement, curves, elevation, scenery. This stretch has it all!


Once out of that stretch, things got flat, straight, and windy pretty quick. Pro tip: if there are hundreds of wind power plants, you're in for a windy time.

In Bigg's Junction, I was filling up when who should show up, but Scott(?) again on his BMW.\



I crossed the Columbia River over to Washington, then rode alongside the river.





Simply beautiful.

The Dalles was the location of the largest bioterror attack in US history. The aforementioned Rajneesh cult was running for 2 of 3 county seats and decided to keep people in The Dalles (the largest population in Wasco County) from voting by poisining the salad bars in 10 restaurants with salmonella. 751 people were affected, none died, thankfully, but the attack had the opposite effect, in that the non cultish people turned out in droves to vote against the cult members.

Riding down the road, I noticed a freight train on the Oregon side seemed to be taunting me into a race. Not wanting to back down from a challenger that was only several thousand feet longer than me, I accepted. It was a close battle, I would get a nice straight stretch and pull ahead, the train had the shortest distance, no traffic to worry about, and more or less straight tracks. I, on the other hand, had the power of the V4. Crossing the bridge back to the Oregon side, things looked close, and I was parked at my motel walking into the office when the train came rolling by. The train, obviously enthused, said nothing but WOOOOOOO, but I knew he knew he was no match for the Honda, no matter how much he tried to mask his feelings.

Today's Takeaway: Don't eat the salmonella colored salad.

 

The Dalles was a nice enough area, but I try not to hang around too long at a place where a room at Day's Inn is over $250 a night. I had picked the cheapest motel I could find, and it was still $90. Leaving the hotel, the radar looked clear, but it was very overcast and foggy. I headed up the Historic Columbia River Highway, which was wet, but beautiful. So much better than hopping on I84.

Once I got through Rowena, things got fun. The Rowena Loops, as I believe they're called, were a great, if short, set of switchbacks and views of,well, fog. The skies couldn't make up their mind whether they wanted to open the floodgates, shut them, or just let a few drops through here and there.

Riding up to Panorama Point State Park, I was hoping to get above the fog a bit to catch a glimpse of Mt Hood.



I'm sure it's in there somewhere. I decided to ride the loop down around Mt Hood to see if I could see it closer up. What I actually ended up seeing was miles and miles of heavy rain and fog with visibility slightly further than a cat can vomit. No, really, it was down to about 200 ft. I never saw Mt Hood, just the temperature dropping down to 41 and the rain pick up. I don't mind riding in rain, but riding in rain in slow traffic is no favorite of mine. At one point, there were 10 of us vehicles stuck behind a Subaru Forester doing 15-20 mph. I'm from SC, where seing a Subaru is about as rare as seeing 13 small children riding a yak through the McDonalds drive through. I've noticed that there are two types of Subaru drivers, excluding the WRX/STi guys. There are the Subies covered in bumper stickers about coexisting, treehugging, etc, going 10 or more under the speed limit. Then there are the drivers putting all their faith in AWD and driving 15-20 MPH over the limit.

Once I got through Portland, the rain slowed, then stopped, as I headed for the coast. Not a whole lot to report between Portland and the coast, so here's a few pic to finish out this installment.





World's Shortest River







I rode down US 101 to Florence, where I camped. It was a beautiful night. I knew I was not on an East Coast beach as shown by the Warning- Elk signs along the beachfront.

Today's Takeaway: I haven't the foggiest.

 

Camping from a bike sure seemed to be against the norm in America, with most campsites being filled with houses on wheels with what looked to be more attached baggage than that which little beast of burden airport mini trucks are laden worldwide. I observed the campsite as land barges came and went. Partly envious, partially disgusted at the excess, but more often than not, appreciative that families were out enjoying this beautiful country we are blessed to occupy. Through the evening, the crackling fires, the shrieks of children startling one another in a late night game of hide and seek, and the night creatures rustling through the woods served to remind me of the wonders that are camping, even if setting up and tearing down camp each day gets old.

Leaving the campground, I headed down into Florence, OR. Nearly there, the truck in front of me started motioning my direction and pulled over. I just figured they were letting me pass, so I gave them the customary wave and continued on my way, grateful for those that do actually pull over. In my mirror, I catch glances of the truck swerving back into the road, accelerating rapidly, closing the gap and flashing it's lights. I pulled off to the side of the road, only to have the occupants of said truck deliver a verbal exclamation awakening the innate primal fear that lurks deep within every motorcyclist, the day they hoped would never arrive, the blow to the senses, the sheer and utter terror of realizing that your side bag's latch was MIA and had been hanging open to maniacally scatter its contents with reckless abandon to every caprice of the wind and every divot and rise of the road. Sacrifices to the bane of bikers: traffic. A quick assessment revealed all of my clothes gone, my coat missing, stove fuel lost, and a few odds and ends at large.

Waiting on the string of traffic that seemed to materialize as soon as I needed to cut around in the road, I couldn't help but prepare for the worst. Riding slowly and keeping an eye on the road for what once was in my possession was suspenseful and disheartening the further I went. Finally, some road debris. I retrieved my hat and some socks, darting into the road when traffic allowed and out of it when it forbade. It became mechanical; walk several hundred feet, reclaim one item, repeat ad nauseam. Luckily I kept the majority of my clothes in a drawstring bag, so they were mostly in one spot of the road. It was frustrating watching traffic drive right over my gear before I could get to it, but in the end, I recovered everything less a pair of nail clippers, a can of stove fuel, a crushed stick of deodorant, and a broken beard trimmer (which I personally take as a sign). Everything had been spread out over about a mile and a half. Some kind person had stopped and pulled many of the items onto the shoulder, but quite a few were still in the middle of the lane. At least I got to practice my Frogger skills (or I guess Crossy Roads these days).

Continuing on, I paused to marvel at a drivethrough Subway. Don't judge me, we don't have those fancy innovations at our Subway's in South Carolina. Continuing to ride from the coast, the cars ahead of me suddenly halted and ALL the cameras came out. Even mine.



Wouldn't want to hit one of those walking piles of delicious jerky.

Continuing down to take 138 Westward, I realized that I'd be passing near Crater Lake. The nearest entrance was closed due to fire, but I looped around and caught the open entrance and I am very glad I did. Entering Crater Lake is just like riding up a normal mountain, all the way to the top, but the first glimpse of the lake can cause involuntary pulmonary arrest. It's massive! Pictures do no justice.







Leaving Crater Lake, I headed south to Klamath Falls. I faintly remembered reading something about Klamath Falls once, but I couldn't remember what it concerned.

Riding past Klamath Lake, it hit me. Then it hit me again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.



Ahh, yes. The infamous Klamath Falls midge. Introduced to control the mosquito population, populations exploded and the midges now rule town. Midges everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO2HkU6vR40" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not my video, but you get the idea.

I had been planning on camping, but with the midges plus mesh gear, I needed a shower and a place to clean my helmet, so I got a cheap motel.

Today's Takeaway: Noone expects the unexpected wardrobe malfunction.

 

Just wow, and in my neck of the country to boot, nice to read another riders take on what we have up here, less the bugs and rain.

 

What a trip! Please someone go somewhere and write about it!

 

I have been loving this write up. Thanks.

 

Thanks for the photos and write ups. The Going to the Sun road is one of my favorites.

 

Op, when did you make this trip ?