Leg 4 - Twisty & Touring

Early Saturday morning following the conclusion of the Iron Butt Rally in Spokane, I headed out on what would be the twistiest part of the ride. My ride would take me down to Colfax, WA where I could see my wife briefly (she was visiting her father and stepmother). Following a too brief visit I headed down US195 towards Lewiston, ID. This part of the country is known for wheat fields and is the pea and lentil capital of the world. Here's a harvest picture of a combine.



About 17 miles south of Colfax is the college town of Pullman, WA which is the home of Washington State University. Our youngest daughter graduated from WSU. Here's the entry courtyard at the main intersection.



At the top of the hill before Lewiston, ID, there are two ways down: a superslab road and the Spiral Highway (the old road). Which one do I take? Hmmm??? Spiral Highway here I come. Here are a few pictures. Needless to say it's really twisty and is twisty ride number one for the day.






After the delight of riding the Spiral Highway, I headed for Asotin and the start of the Rattlesnake Grade. Of course there was a courthouse in Asotin so I snapped a quick photo. Oops, it's not the 39 county seat ride!


The road out of Asotin heading south is a twisty one in itself but there was no opportunity to take any photos. But here's a map picture from Mapsource.

I went down the Rattlesnake Grade (yes, that's the official name and here's what it looks like on the GPS map. It is a real snake and there's a delightful cafe at the bottom of the grade but I didn't stop there.



Heading up the other side, I snapped this photo of OR3 which shows a little twistiness.


After these sets of twisties, it was a ride down through the farm country of NE Oregon where I tagged yet another cool looking courthouse in Enterprise (Wallowa County)


It was just 7 more miles until I reached Joseph where I scored my next cafe tag. I drafted a willing photographer to snag my photo and then enjoyed a "Cup of Ribs" and some broccoli cole slaw and iced tea. The folks here were really cool and excited to see another rider on the Cafe 2 Cafe ride. One fellow was especially interested in the Wing and gave me some advice about the road to Stanley. Hmm, should I follow his tips? What adventure would that lead to?




After refueling at the local Chevron station, I headed for Imnaha which was a little out of the way,



but I had never been there in all of my trips in this area. It was a nice 40 or so mile round trip down there where I snagged the obligatory postoffice and sign shots.



If I were on a dual sport bike I would have followed the sign pointing to Halfway. But I'm not, well at least I don't think so.

Leaving Imnaha, I headed back to the start of FS39 (my favorite motorcycle road in Oregon), it started to sprinkle so I donned a little raingear and rode the 37 miles out to the Hells Canyon overlook (again one of my favorite spots).



Along the way, I found the road that comes from Imnaha via dirt.



While I was there I noticed a BMW F650 and a Kawasaki with WA plates. So I struck up a conversation with them and inquired if they were active on the F650 forum. The fellow was familiar with the site and when I gave him my screen name, he chuckled and said, "You have a pretty farkled up F650", to which I agreed. It's amazing to meet someone on the middle of nowhere who has heard of you. While were chatting, a group of Harley riders walked up to the Wing, looked at the cockpit and said, "He's probably got an internet connection somewhere there!" I didn't have the heart to tell them that I did, but it gave me a good chuckle.

Twisty road leading to the overlook point.






The tree in the above photo has been photographed many times.

Leaving the viewpoint, it was a fun and twisty ride down to the OR86 intersection where I headed east to Oxbow where I missed my turn and ended up in ID and had to come back across the Snake River. Yup, that was a TUT (Tim U Turn). It was one of the few on this trip. There was another I probably should have take the next day, but I would have missed the adventure.


ID71 is a private road (owned by the ID Power Company) which parallels the Snake River heading towards the Brownlee Dam. There were lots of gentle sweepers before crossing the Snake into Idaho where I snapped a few pictures of this large earthen dam. It's noted for good fishing in the area. And the ride up to Cambridge was another twisty one.





Leaving the twisty canyon I crested the hill and came across this display of old farm machinery including quite a few horse drawn combines. Compare these combines to the first picture in this report.




I refueled in Cambridge at the Sinclair service station. Sinclair is one of the few brands in ID that sells gasoline without enthanol. The bike sure runs better on it.

The sun was setting, so I snagged a shadow photo before heading into McCall and the next Cafe.



Arriving at the restaurant after around a 500 mile day, two ladies came out of the restaurant and I enlisted their help in getting a photo.


I phoned Angela and enjoyed a nice steak dinner (a bit pricey) before snagging a motel room next door at the Woodsman Motel.




I hadn't been to McCall for at least 4-5 years, and it was just what I remembered. Here's a picture of the bike at the motel the next morning just before leaving on what would turn out to be the adventure ride of the trip. My room was on the 2nd floor above the Wing.

Leg 3 - Headed NE for One Cafe

Since I was planning to be in Spokane for the finish of the 2009 Iron Butt motorcycle rally, I decided to tag the restaurant that's up in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho on Friday of Labor Day weekend. So after we welcomed the incoming riders at the hotel in Spokane, my friend Tim and I headed out for a little 200 plus mile round trip ride for lunch in Bonner's Ferry. It was an easy ride for us, although the traffic heading up US95 out of Coeur d'Alene was a bit much for the two of us. Soon however we were on the open two lane road which took us by the Silverwood theme park in Athol and through Sandpoint, Idaho. Lunch was at Kootenai River Inn, and I bought a bowl of soup to go and we headed back into Bonner's Ferry with a stop at Zip's Drive Inn where we had sandwiches and I finished off my bowl of soup. Here's the documentation:




It was then a ride back to the hotel via US2 which turned out to be a much better route with less traffic.

Since this report is on my Cafe 2 Cafe ride, I'll not include any other IB Rally information. That will be a subject for a different report.

The next 3 days worth of riding will take on a different form than the previous 3 legs: It will be a touring report as that's what it turned out to be. And what a tour it turned out to be. Stay tuned.

Phase 2 - Doing it IB Style

We got a late start out of Seattle (4pm) because of a wedding that we wanted to attend, but the traffic heading south on I-5 rolled along well. We took a refueling stop at Exit 111 (Hawk's Prairie) and resisted the urge to visit Cabelas. It was then a pleasant ride south to the Kelso/Longview exit and then a few miles ride through those towns until we reached the Longview/Rainier bridge. It's one very high bridge to allow ocean going traffic to pass under on their way to Portland, OR.

Heading south on OR30 for a few miles we finally got off on the Fern Hill road and it was simply a delight: twisty road through farms and forested areas. We then connected with the Apiary Road which was equally fun and twisty. There are no pictures as we were riding!!

Arriving in Vernonia we located the cafe and took the obligatory picture to document our presence.


Wanting to score some bonus points, we ordered a simple cup of soup, a piece of Baklava, and a hot chocolate. After waiting for nearly 1/2 hour we pressed our case with the order taker. It seems as if this was the busiest time for this restaurant, but . . . It even took multiple requests just to get a receipt. And then the chocolate was mediocre at best. On the plus side the baklava and the soup was great. The owner didn't even seem to care about the Cafe 2 Cafe event.

Leaving Vernonia we head SE for our next destination at Troutdale. As we approached our turn for I-405 South, we noted that the exit was closed. Hmmm, what do we do? Follow the GPS and let it auto-route us which it did a nice job. Arriving at the next cafe, which is part of a hotel, it was extremely busy with a wedding and other festivities and lots of people. So we elected to not get bonus points at this location and simply snapped our evidence photo.


It was then a dark and quiet ride up I-84 to Hood River and our next cafe. Arriving at the cafe, we scored a parking place right in front of the restaurant. Parking at this location can be challenging because of hills, so obtaining a good parking spot was a good achievement, especially at 10pm.


Dinner was still being served, so we ordered up our faire.


I had eaten here previously, so I knew it was good, and this meal did not disappoint us. We then started checking for motels and found that everything was full. One motel proprietor finally told us why: There was a John Lennon Legends concert somewhere nearby. So we rode up to The Dalles (17 miles away and scored a room at the last motel on the east side of town - Oregon Motor Motel). While it was an older mom/pop motel, the proprietor let us park the Wing in a great spot and our room was a welcome relief at midnight!

Rising at 7:30am, we were soon off for the next part of our adventure with a first goal of Government Camp. To get there we took a little detour and rode old OR30 and up the Rowena Grade. This is another of the "must ride" roads in the Pacific NW. I had ridden it previously, but it was good to do it with Angela.




Leaving Rowena, we arrived back in Hood River and took OR35 south to US26. We had lots of elevation gain, a twisty road, and not much traffic. Here's one of early shots of Mt. Hood with a steam vent.



Arriving in Government Camp, we located the restaurant, took our documentary photo and then had breakfast at the Mountain View Cafe.

The folks at the Mountain View were super friendly and I can't recommend the breakfast bagel strongly enough. The entire item is home built including the bagel. Very yummy.

It was then a short trip up to the Timberline Lodge up on Mt. Hood.



We then waited for the tag restaurant to open and I snapped a hummingbird in action.



After the restaurant opened, we enjoyed a quick soda and some converstation with a family from Bend who just spent 2 days in the rain on the ocean. Once again, the restaurant staff seemed clueless about the Cafe 2 Cafe ride. Would this continue?

It was then a nice long ride down to Sun River using US26 and US97. We passed by Kahneeta (couldn't stop unfortunately - but it's a worthy stop!!) through Madras and Bend.

Arriving in Sun River we found our restaurant and took the documentary photo. We ordered up and the clerk was super pleasant and very aware of the event. We enjoyed the quick service and great meal: cabbage salad & Jasmine iced tea for me and soup for Angela.


Our hostess then took a joint picture of us for the record and we were once again off.

We had the option of riding directly back to Seattle via Salem, but Angela wanted to tag one more restaurant, so we plotted a course up US97 to Biggs, across the Columbia, over Satus Pass to Toppenish and then on to Cliffdell to Whistlin Jacks for our last tag of this trip. After crossing the Columbia River Angela took some great photos of the wind farms. If you never have seen one of these up close, they are larger than they appear. Each blade is 50-75 feet long and 10-12 feet wide.





Arriving at Whistlin' Jacks (located on US410 just east of Chinook Pass, we documented our arrival.


We were seated, but once again, service was pretty slow, and the restaurant wasn't that busy. Angela's tea was lukewarm at best, but the pie alamode she had was good and my seafood & crab cocktail hit the spot.


Starting out at 8:30pm it was a dark and clear skies night crossing over Chinook Pass. Normally I wouldn't do a pass at night, but the weather conditions were so good, we headed on. We didn't see a single critter and motored on up and over the pass (night is not conducive to photo taking) and arrived at home at just before 11pm.

Arriving at home, Angela said, "Let's just go fill the tank and keep on riding!" I think I have a keeper!! She knows that there are 5 more restaurants to visit and they are a fair distance from us. Looking back over the 31 hours and almost 900 miles that we rode, Cafe Sintra in Sun River was a great memory. That's one worth re-visiting as is the Mountain View Cafe which wasn't on the list. The Pourhouse in Hood River was a close second. The others (apart from the Black Rabbit which we have yet to sample) aren't worth going back to.

By now some of you are frustrated because you couldn't figure out what "Doing it IB Style" meant. IB stands for Iron Butt, and that group sponsors a rally where the riders score bonus points by getting a photo at specified locations with their marker flag which has their rider ID number. They then head off for the next bonus point location. Essentially that was the style of this ride, except we slowed it down a bit and enjoyed a meal or two.

This coming Thursday night I head out for the 5 remaining cafes to be tagged in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Stay tuned.