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.