Day 9 Goldendale to Home

We got up early in the morning and got packed up in record time.  We had the scent of home in our nostrils, so to speak, and didn't want to waste any time in getting there.  We let ourselves have coffee, but mostly, our morning consisted of waking up, packing our bags and breaking camp.  There was a mention of showers, but neither of us felt particularly compelled.

Our last campsite, I'd only remembered to take a pic as we were packing up.

In original plans, we wanted to hit a well known motorcycling road called Windy Ridge, which was back down by where we saw the wildfire the day before, and while we were at it, to hit a cool little stretch of road on the other side of the river, outside of The Dalles, OR.  As it was though, we wanted to get a move on, so saved those roads for another time, and instead just went on the 142, a road that Chuck had ridden on a previous trip and recommended.

Chuck guaranteed that I would like it, and had actually shown me footage of it before, but with all the road discussions we'd had, and my mind distracted by other things, I forgot exactly what this road was supposed to be.  It started out OK, but nothing particularly noteworthy--it was a farm road that was mostly straight, with a few turns thrown in every now and then.  Not bad, but pretty similar to what we'd seen the past couple days.

That soon changed though as we found ourselves winding down through a canyon, back towards the Gorge.  It not only was a scenic and twisty canyon road, but it also became sort of a one lane road.  The center line disappeared and a rider could easily imagine that he was on a fun one way road winding down through a canyon.  We had a car come the other way to remind us that it was indeed a two way road, and a damn narrow one at that.

It was a nice little ride, with a couple fun surprises, like a sharp turn that was so crowned it was basically a dome, with a person's front lawn directly on the other side.  We wondered how many errant drivers/riders have ended up in that yard.  

The only picture I took of the Columbia, doesn't come close to justice.

Soon enough, we were back on the 14, riding along the banks of the Columbia.  We were hungry and our bikes were thirsty, so we stopped in White Salmon for breakfast and gas.  White Salmon didn't have a whole lot to offer, but we did find a cafe that looked nice enough, and had breakfast out on the sidewalk.  Our server was mighty pleasant and the food was good.

I look lost in thought. Probably thinking about a shower.

In looking at the map, there were really only two options for us if we wanted to head north and west, either go over towards Portland and head north from there, or head north earlier to take us up past Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier.  I'd done the road by the mountains on my trip last year, and while I remembered a few good views along most of the road I recalled as being not so remarkable in terms of scenery and horribly damaged in places.  I told Chuck about my recollection, and he said he'd rather brave those roads than be stuck on I-5 or other major highways.  Fair enough.  So we took the mountain route.

At first, I thought I may have been thinking of the wrong road, or that the WA DOT had actually been on the ball and done some serious work in the span of a year.  The road was in great condition and we got to have some fun in some well sculpted turns.  But as we went farther north, the road conditions deteriorated, especially on the northbound lane.  The asphalt was filled with all sorts of ruts, holes, dips, lumps, ridges, whathaveyou, from all the snow and ice that's in the area in the winter months.  Going fast on this road was not an option, it was more of a mental exercise in finding the path that would be the least jarring.  

That aspect of the ride was fairly taxing.  You had to keep your wits about you, because it felt like an obstacle course.  And on top of that, you had to keep standing and sitting to help the suspension with all the bouncing that was going on.  At least, that's what I was doing.  I have no idea if Chuck was doing the same--I was too busy wrestling with my bike to see what Chuck was up to.

Eventually, we got to the end of that road and after a little rest break in Randle, we were due to be on somewhat major roads for the rest of the day.  This was Labor Day weekend, and it was Saturday, so we soon felt the congestion of civilization making its presence known.  We would be stuck behind cars, and there was no sense in trying to pass them, because there would just be more cars ahead of them.

I guess I'd been expecting that and had resigned myself to it.  I knew it wouldn't be fast paced, but so long as we were moving at a steady speed, I wasn't too worried about it.  Chuck, on the other hand, felt differently.

He got increasingly more irritable as we were stuck in traffic.  We weren't talking a whole lot on the intercom, but I could tell by his riding that he was getting pissy.  We stopped for one more gas up in Eatonville where Chuck confessed his agitation.  He said that he needed to get something to eat, but I wasn't really hungry myself.  I was more in a mood to just get home.  Chuck agreed that he pretty much felt the same and that we should just push on.

In retrospect, we should have planned our route a little better at that point.  The road we took north was the worst stretch of the trip, in my opinion.  It was like any semi-urban road in America--straight with a stoplight at least every quarter mile, with an array of run down businesses and newer big box stores.  We were probably on that stretch for half an hour or so, but it felt like an eon of monotony.

We'd meant to get on I-5 from there, just so we could make time, but instead ended up on 167, another boring, straight road.  At least 167 is a highway though, no stoplights to deal with, only holiday traffic.  We rode in the HOV lane and made decent time and before too long, were in spitting distance of Seattle.  

167 connects with 405, and once we hit 405, Chuck was out of there.  All the pent up aggression manifested itself in his right wrist and he was zipping along, weaving in between cars, pulling maneuvers that would leave Vanilla Ice chagrined.  I did my best to keep up with him while not further pissing off the drivers he left in his wake.

We had to cross Lake Washington to get to my place, so took I-90 to cross over.  Chuck had been going pretty fast on 405, but once we hit I-90, which had the express lanes open in our direction, Chuck let loose and opened up the throttle.  I followed suit, if I didn't, Chuck would have disappeared into the distance.  We flew by cars like they were standing still and my SV was definitely working hard with the weight and drag of the luggage and long days of riding in its recent history--I felt a bit like Rooster Cogburn pushing Li'l Blackie for all he was worth.  I was also apprehensive of any police, my first speeding ticket in many years still fresh in my memory.  

But, fortunately for us, no police were patrolling that stretch of I-90 that day, and we made it into Seattle proper where there was some expected traffic.  It was nothing major though, and 15 minutes later, we pulled into my driveway.  

Road weary, and in a bit of a daze, we relaxed with a couple ceremonial tumblers of Knob Creek and reflected on the past 9 days.  We had had a few hiccups on the way, but no major breakdowns or disasters.  We'd managed to stay in good spirits most of the time, and had managed to not get sick of each other over the span.  The prospect of hot showers, plumbing, refrigeration, electricity, relaxation, video games, and soft beds were beckoning to us, but there was no denying it:  this had been a fantastic trip.

Day 8 St. Maries, ID to Goldendale, WA

[Author's note: Unfortunately, the pictures are few and far between at this point in the trip, we were apparently more set on getting home than taking pictures.]


With the promise of home in the not-too-distant future, we were motivated  to break camp earlier than usual.  We got all packed up and Chuck insisted on bringing the leftover firewood, since it was good wood, and we'd paid good money for it.  I agreed, plus it would come in handy later when we camped that night.

Chuck doing his impression of "Bear Grylls finds a honeycomb"

Our route took us through Idaho and eastern Washington farmland which as far as farmland goes, was actually not bad riding.  There were small hills, so most of the roads had some decent curves scattered around, though they were all slightly sketchy without much banking, slick tarry spots, or scattered gravel at driveways.  Still, it was all in all pleasant riding.

Before too long, my gas light came on, and after the experience outside of Glacier where I was basically riding on fumes, I expressed my concern to Chuck.  He wasn't too worried about it, as according to the map, we'd be hitting small towns every 10 miles or so.  Well, the map was right, we did hit small towns along the way, but calling them towns might be an exaggeration.  Usually when people talk of small towns, they mean it might have a couple stores, a gas station, and maybe a post office.  Well, the “towns” we went through didn't even have gas stations.

We eventually came to one though, that had a commercial gas place, and had a small garage with a couple gas pumps out front.  We cruised through the "town" to see if there was some part that we were missing, and no, it didn't appear that we were.  We decided to give the garage a try since our fuel situation was getting more desperate with every passing moment.

We pulled into the garage, and immediately an older fellow came out to greet us.  I asked him if their pumps were indeed operational, and he said one was, so long as I was OK with regular gas.  I was, and was glad to fill up my tank.  The dials on the pump weren't functional, at least as far as I could tell, and the guy was cash only.  I don't know about the quality of the gas, or how much it was per gallon, I was just thankful to be safe for riding again.  

Chuck put in a little gas in his bike too, until we could get to a bigger town with a proper gas station.  The next town, as it would turn out, was Colfax, WA where we gassed up again (I only put in like .3 of a gallon) and Chuck got some unsolicited advice for roads from some Harley guys.  We were ready for lunch, and agreed on a Mexican place, Sol Vallarta.

The clientele was all white in there, but the staff was brown, so while they may have catered to gringos, the food was still pretty good.  I had some chipotle enchiladas with shredded beef, and they hit the spot.

In looking at the map, there was a promising sounding road called "Snake River Canyon" but the drawback was that it would take us ultimately south and east, the opposite direction of where we wanted to go.  Earlier in the trip we would have been OK with the diversion, but the name of the game now was making miles.  There was a road that looked nearly as interesting as the Snake River Canyon road, but took us in the right direction, so we decided to give that a try.  According to the map, we'd cross over a dam and then head north and west from there.

We found the road without much trouble, and it was indeed a cool, twisty road, though it wasn't in the greatest condition, so we kept our speed in check.  When we got to the bottom of the canyon though, and got to the dam, we were thrown for a loop.  

The dam was all blocked off with chain link fence and signs about authorized personnel only and ID checks and such.  We were immediately disheartened and stopped to look at the map to see if there were alternate routes.  The only options were to backtrack to either Colfax or a junction that would take us on Snake River Canyon Rd.  We both agreed that we'd seen enough of Colfax, and decided that the Snake River Rd. diversion would be the lesser of the two evils.  As we were turning around though, we noticed that a car we'd passed earlier was waiting at the gate to the dam.

The driver was elderly and didn't look like he was an employee there, so we turned around and waited at the gate behind him.  A white truck pulled up with a security officer behind the wheel.  He waved the old man through and then asked us for our IDs.  As it turned out, the dam road was still available to the public, but you had to give your ID at the entrance so that they would know you weren't some terrorist or something.

The guy checked our IDs and gave us the rundown of crossing the dam: go slow, don't stop, and since we were on motorcycles, to be careful of the tracks that we had to cross (basically like train tracks.)  Crossing was an interesting experience, instead of a straight road across, we had to take a serpentine route with all sorts of big industrial looking machinery around us.  Chuck said that it felt very similar to the dry docks from when he was in the Navy.  

We made it to the other side without incident, and were relieved to not have had to do a bunch of back tracking.  We followed a twisty road out of the canyon and made our way towards the Columbia River.  We hit Walla Walla along the way (the town so nice they named it twice) and pulled off for a break.  I suggested trying to find the disc golf course there, as I recalled it being a nice park to have a stretch in.  The signs left something to be desired and we ended up taking a couple wrong turns and not finding the park, and getting lost in the town, even though it's not very big.  We got our bearings with my phone eventually, and ended up riding through the campus of Whitman College.  I'd never heard of the school before, but like all colleges, it proved to be a haven of cute girls walking around in summer garb, enjoying the last of their summer.

Purty windmills

We eventually got back on track and hit the highway, which would follow along the Columbia River Gorge, and actually lead us into Oregon before hitting Washington again.  This part of the ride, we weren't especially looking forward to.  It would be one of the more major highways of our trip, not a lot of exciting riding to be had.

Taking a break before tackling the Gorge

The first leg of the section wasn't anything special, just a lot of brown, semi-arid land like you see in much of eastern Oregon and Washington, but once we got to the actual Gorge, it was beautiful.  The only thing I can think of to compare it to is the Grand Canyon.  Now, it's nowhere near as epic as the Grand Canyon, but it is very much impressive in it's own right, with cliff faces being a couple hundred feet high (I would guess).  As beautiful as it was though, it was ridiculously windy.  We were fighting the wind the whole time we were next to the water.  Although my rpm's were basically the same as normal conditions, I could tell my engine was working harder to maintain the 80 mph we were travelling (we were trying to make miles, after all).  I tucked in as best I could and tried to slipstream through it, but still, I was getting blown all over the place.

At 130 miles on my trip odometer, my gas light came on.  I have never seen it come on that early before, and as seemed to be a theme in this part of the trip, we were in a pretty uninhabited area.  Neither of us had any idea how far the next gas station was, but it had been a while since we'd seen one.

Our original, tentative plan, was to try to camp at Maryhill State Park, which was right next to the Columbia.  As it happened though, we were riding along, keeping our eyes peeled for a gas station, and we saw a big cloud of smoke on the horizon.  Soon enough, we realized that it was a wildfire, right at Maryhill.  We must have just gotten there shortly after it started, because we saw all sorts of emergency vehicles headed that way.  We stopped to take a couple pictures and figure out what we wanted to do next.

We saw that there was another state park about 20 miles away, directly north of us.  That was more or less the direction we were headed anyway, so decided that we'd hit that up for camping.

Fortunately, we hit a gas station almost as soon as we headed north and filled up.  I got something like 39 mpg on that leg, which was by far the worst gas mileage I've ever had on the SV.  We went to the park and had no trouble finding a spot.  

It was mostly RVs there, and people were giving us strange looks as we rode in, but fortunately, there were a number of tent sites that were inaccessible to people with trailers.  When we went to the fee kiosk, we were dismayed to see that it cost $22 and that no campfires were allowed.  After seeing the wildfire, we could understand the fire ban, so we didn't complain too much about that.  Still, the price was high, considering that the park wasn't much to brag about.  Heyburn had seemed like a much better kept park, and had showers included in the price.  This place, Brooks, had showers, but you had to pay quarters to use them.  And to add insult to it, the place was super dry and dusty, the kind of dust that manages to stick to you, even if you don't touch it.

We pitched camp quickly, and headed towards Goldendale to get dinner.  It was nearing dusk when we were leaving, so we made sure to put our clear visors on--the first and only time we used them the whole trip.  It felt good to use them, it was a way to reassure ourselves that they hadn't been a complete waste of space.

Chuck briefly toyed with the idea of eating at this roadhouse we passed, a derelict old building with stringed lights on the porch and a confederate flag flying from the roof.  But when we rode by and saw that we would be the only patrons there, we decided to keep going.  We ended up at a bar and grill place in downtown Goldendale, one of the few places that was open.  Enticingly, they had a sign for Rogue beer out front, so we knew it couldn't be all bad.

For whatever reason, the owner thought it was a good idea to play his jukebox at full volume, which was annoying.  We just wanted to have a nice meal and a refreshing beer, but it was like we'd stepped into a hopping club.  The owner/bartender was the only server working, and though the place wasn't busy, there were a decent number of people there and it took us a while to actually get service.

Eventually we did though, and the food wasn't bad.  We did have to kind of shout at each other, but the music actually wasn't that bad either.  It was just obnoxiously loud.  I had a fried porkchop sandwich, something I've never had before, and it was pretty good.  It went along well with my 22 oz. IPA.

We finished our meal, and headed back to camp, wary of deer.  We didn't see any, thankfully and made it back without issue.  We had an after dinner drink, to the sound of mariachi music in a nearby camp, and soon hit the sack, the promise of home in our near future.

Day 7 Glacier to St. Maries, ID

We got up the next morning and had coffee.  Since this was a primitive campground, there was no potable water onsite.  There was, however, a creek running by our site.  Chuck suggested we could just use that water to make coffee, and I expressed concern about there being cows wading in it and such.  He made coffee with it anyway, and assured me that he'd let the water boil for at least 5 minutes beforehand.  It was all good, as it turned out, my digestive tract was unharmed--that is to say, nothing was any worse than usual.

It was now Thursday, and we wanted to be back home by Saturday so we could have a couple days to recoup before going back to work (Monday was Labor Day).  That meant we had 3 days to make it from Glacier to Seattle.  Not an impossible task at all, but we had an unspoken pact to avoid major highways unless it was necessary.  So we mentally prepared for the power trek we had ahead of us.

We really wanted to see the scenery of the Going-to-the-Sun road again, but we really did not want to deal with the crazy work zones and traffic, so we instead went around the long way, from East Glacier to West Glacier, which turned out to be a lot longer and more desolate than we'd anticipated.

Heading away from our campsite

There was still fantastic scenery to be had and we pulled off at a scenic overlook for a pit stop.  Chuck also had a task to perform.  I don't want to delve too much into Chuck's personal life here, but he'd recently gone through a divorce. Obviously, it's not an easy thing for anyone, and this being about the easternmost point of the trip, we had a ceremony of letting go of the past, and getting it as far away as possible. I can't speak for him, but I think it did him well.

I think Going-to-the-Sun Road is on the other side of that ridge.

The only picture where I managed to get both of us in frame

We left from there and made our way towards West Glacier, what would be the next bastion of civilization.  As we were making our way, my gas light came on, which is never a comforting sign.  We kept going, looking for gas at any point.  After a little while longer, my gas light went solid.  I had never let it get to that point before, but from what I'd read on the forums, blinking means "Yeah, you'd better think about getting gas some time soon" whereas solid means "Why are you still riding, you fool? Stop and fill up NOW!"  But, being as there was no option but to keep going, we did exactly that.  I did manage to make it to West Glacier with 180+ miles on the trip odometer (the light usually comes on around 150 or so). It was the happiest I've been to buy overpriced gas to date.

We both filled up, and decided to get lunch at the cafe attached to the store.  I had a bison burger, and Chuck had some other sort of burger.  We both felt that the meal was worthy of a "meh."  It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't much more than sustenance.  There was a souvenir shop attached, and I got a couple coasters, one for myself and one for a friend.  I had wanted to get shot glasses, but the Glacier glasses were lame...just a silhouette of a bear that said Glacier National Park underneath.  So I went for slightly less lame stone coasters with pictures of animals on them.

From then on out, we had some steady riding ahead of us as we made our way into Idaho.  We hit a lot of really cool roads along the way, though most of it is a blur

A break somewhere along the way. Is that a pile of mud in front of my bike?

No, no it's not.

We made it to St. Marie, ID where we would camp at Heyburn State Park.  Before going to the park though, we stopped at the local grocery store and got some supplies for hobo packs.  As we pulled up, a couple guys pulled up next to us and asked questions about our bikes and such.  Chuck was particularly impressed that the guy recognized that his bike was an FZ6R and was asking specific questions about it.  He was also somewhat familiar with the SV, though it was more along the lines of "Oh yeah, I think that's what my buddy's girlfriend rides."  Sigh.

While shopping, Chuck got hit on by a nasty girl--his words, not mine, though I saw the woman he was talking about and I can't really disagree.  Ahh well, its still nice to be noticed, right?

We rode to Heyburn on what would be a great twisty road, but it was late in the day so we had the sun right in our eyes.   A lot of turns we had to take slowly, and even then, had to just hope that we weren't about to run into a pothole or deer.

We didn't know what the camping situation would be like at Heyburn, so followed signs to the park HQ to find out what the deal was.  As it turned out, there were campsites right behind the HQ.  As we rode through the sites, I noticed that most, if not all of them, had reservation tags on their signposts.  I was getting a little dismayed, being tired and not in the mood to hunt for camping elsewhere. But then Chuck took a closer look and saw that most of the reservations were for future dates. This place was apparently a pretty popular campground, especially with Labor Day right around the corner. We got a nice somewhat private site on a hill and set up camp.

The fees were weird, amounting to something like $16.97.  We only had 20s, so went to the camp hosts to ask about change.  They were confused about what we were asking, but eventually we found out that we could pay at the HQ in the morning.  We got a couple bundles of firewood from the hosts for $10 and headed back to camp.

Dinner that night was to be hobo packs, similar to what we had at Farragut but without me spilling boiling sauce all over my feet.  The good news was that this time around, my feet remained unburnt and the sauce stayed in its container.  The bad part was that after Chuck had wrapped up the food in the foil packets, he had four lumps of aluminum foil that were more or less indistinguishable from each other.  When it came time to eat, we realized that the packs had gotten mixed up and had gotten either undercooked or overcooked.  I think I found the situation a lot more humorous than Chuck did.  

We'd done a lot of riding that day so were pretty beat and went to bed somewhat early.  As it turned out, we really would have been fine with only one bundle of wood and had four good pieces left over.