| ::CURRENT TIME:: |
|---|
| -- Q.O.D. -- |
| -- l i n k s -- |
| :: portland'5 centers for the arts [>] |
| :: team oregon m/c training [>] |
| :: slashdot [>] |
| :: sluggy freelance [>] |
| :: snoopy's doghouse [>] |
Copyright © 2007 Edward E. Williams
This was a quick seven-day journey around some of the sights and great motorcycling roads of British Columbia. The trip took place from September 8 to September 14, 2007. I was travelling with my good friend Aaron and the trip, like many, was not nearly long enough...
========================
View Larger Map
Day One - Portland, OR to Hope, BC
September 8, 2007
363 miles, 8 hours.
This trip begins with me being "technically" unemployed. I ended my career in Broadcasting yesterday and I don't start my new job until a week from Monday, so except for the fact that I have a place to go on the 17th of September, I'm currently being paid by nobody for doing anything.
But, I need this week. My stress level climbed to all-time highs in the last few days of the old job and I'm planning to hit the ground running hard in the new one, so this week with one of my closest friends is going to be great.
So, it was on a sunny Saturday morning and Aaron and I struck out from Portland after a brief bagle breakfast at Noah's on Hawthorne Street. Today was bascially just a travel and "shake out the bugs" day to get back in to "road mode" - there are no pictures for this day, it was mostly I-5 and some gas stops.
But we're here in Hope after doing about 365 miles today. We're staying at a place called the Swiss Chalet motel - owned and run my a lovely old Japanese couple ... in Canada. Ahhh, the cultural mix.
Aaron and I just got done having a very nice Sushi supper across the street and took a short walk around town. Now I'm wathing some TV and Aaron's over on the other side of the building in his room .... reading, of all things. Our main rules this week - no talking about work, no working on work, no long days, no pressing to "make miles". The watch words - rest and relaxation.
Tomorrow will begin leisurely. We're not planning to strike out until about 9:00 am.
===============================================
View Larger Map
Day Two - Hope, BC to Kamloops, BC
September 9, 2007
203 Miles, 7 hours
Indeed, today was a relaxed one as expected. As we would do for most of the week, we eschewed highways and larger cities for the pace that can be enjoyed on the sideroads and back roads. We had the Destination Highways book for BC along with us this week, and we were hunting DH's most days. Betweeen that book, a decent BC road map and my GPS, we were in pretty good shape as far as finding roads to ride.
We made a few rest stops today, and I took a few pictures, but today was mostly a riding day.
Along the side of highway 5A between Merrit and Nicola along the Nicola River
As you can see, we lucked out on the weather all the way 'round
We spotted some rafters up river a ways. A little farther along the road, we also saw several kayakers practicing in the white water as well.
It took a little while to find accomodations in Kamloops, oddly. Turns out that on Sunday evenings, a number of tour trains stop in Kamloops from Jasper, Banff and Whistler all at once. Many of the better establishments in town are booked solid. And, sure enough, later after dinner, we observed busloads and busloads of people being shuttled from the trains to the downtown hotels. We found a motel that had a vacancy. It wasn't the ritz, but it was clean and quiet and didn't have any creatures crawling about, so it was fine.
We had supper in a nice Irish pub on Victoria Street (no booze, we were riding) and then headed back to our motel for the evening. We spent a little bit of time going over a probable route for Monday and then called it a night.
================================================
View Larger Map
Day Three - Kamloops, BC to Revelstoke, BC
September 10, 2007
225 miles, 8 hours
Ahhh .... the day that led us off pavement - much to our surprise. We had this great idea - let's start off by heading up Westsyde road out of Kamloops and up the West side of the North Thompson River. We'd then cross the river near Barriere and head back down toward Kamloops on highway 5 before getting on the Trans-Canada and heading for Revelstoke. Cool!, we said - looks like a plan.
So, there we were on Westsyde road having a great ride. We took a rest stop along the banks of the North Thompson River and marvelled at how the only thing breaking the silence was the sound of moving water.
And again, you see that we lucked out on weather - a phenomenon that we would encounter all week long.
We get to McLure and we see a ferry crossing. Up ahead of us, the road turns to dirt. We looked at the map - no real mention of a dirt road. We looked at the DH book again ... still no mention of this road turning to dirt. We looked at each other, thought a moment and agreed that we'd try it for a while. Now for me, on my GS, the road was going to prove no major hassle. However, for Aaron on his FZ6, and not having much experience riding on non-paved surfaces, this was going to be a bit more of a challenge. We figured if the pavement didn't come back in a few kilometers then we'd turn back.
As it turns out, the road was in good shape, even if not paved. It was a hard packed, well engineered gravel road, that's all. No major hassles at all, honestly.
Westsyde road somewhere north of McLure, BC.
The bottom line is that we both decided to continue. Aaron was having no real problems with his ride and I certainly wasn't, so we decided to continue along.
This gives you a good idea of where we were - the little red line to the left center of the picture is our track.
It only got a little dicey toward the end when looser gravel, serious downhill grades and tight corners all added up together in some spots. He probably would never admit it, but I think Aaron was kinda proud of having conquered this little patch of "off-road" with his street bike.
The rest of the day was just a push along the Trans-Canada Highway (highway 1) in to Revelstoke. We stayed at the Regent Inn, checked in for two nights in order to have a "base" of operations for a couple of days, went to our rooms, took showers, then we hit the pub. After a walk around town to explore a bit and some consultation on tomorrow's ride, we hit the sack.
===============================================
View Larger Map
Day Four - Revelstoke-Revelstoke Loop Ride
September 11, 2007
271 miles, 10 hours
Today's ride was simple. Hit as many DH's as possible, including DH2, and make a day of enjoying the road, the great weather and the scenery. Since we were heading back to the same place we were departing, it was very nice to hit the road and ride the twisties without the saddlebags, duffles, etc. Each of us brought our tank bags and that was it - the bikes were unencumbered otherwise.
The day started with the short ferry ride from Shelter Bay over to Galena Bay on Upper Arrow Lake
Upper Arrow Lake south of Revelstoke
Tucked in near the front - we were third and fourth off the boat after an RV and a log truck - both easily passed after exiting the ramp at Galena Bay.
We made a stop in Nakusp and then continued on down to Fauquier to take the cable ferry over to Needles and the nirvana that is DH2. We paused in Vernon for lunch then headed back to Revelstoke via 97A.
This night in Revelstoke was a night for relaxation and a really, really nice dinner in the 112 Restaurant at our hotel. We had a bottle of wine, dessert, after dinner ports and spent hours just talking and enjoying the food and the company. I wasn't totally sure how we were going to do the next morning, but ...
===============================================
View Larger Map
Day Five - Revelstoke, BC to Radium Hot Springs, BC
September 12, 2007
272 miles, 11 hours
Day five dawned STORMY! We were both woken up early in the morning by very gusty winds and heavy rain pounding at the windows of our rooms - and since I had opened the window in my room the night before, some of my stuff actually got wet sitting over on the floor near the window. I figure that our luck had run out finally and that we were going to experience some standard Pacific Northwest September weather.
Turns out I was wrong - and right. Sort of.
The rain had pretty much quit by 6:30 am and by the time we were packing up our bikes, it was actually getting a little bit warm. However, since we were heading in to the Canadian Rockies today, the decision to stick with winter gloves and liners in jackets, etc. proved to be a good one.
After a quick breakfast, we headed out on the Trans-Canada again toward the east. We hadn't quite decided where we were going to stop for the night, but we had an idea that it would be in the general area of Cranbrook.
We made a "warm-up" stop at Rogers Pass
You can see that it was still damp, but it was not actually raining. It was COLD, however - temps were hovering right around 35 degrees (Farenheit... obviously).
A little farther along on the highway, we were stopped for construction work for about half an hour.
Crews were rock scaling up ahead and they would shut the road down for about 20-30 minutes at a time, blast, then clean the rock up and reopen the road for a while.
We cruised in to the valley outside Golden and headed for little detour in to Banff. We took a brief rest stop along side the Columbia River
... it's a considerably wilder version of itself up here than it is along the Oregon-Washington border, that's for sure.
The thing that began to strike me while we were riding in this area was the smell. The air was thick with the natural, clean, crisp smell of balsam fir, spruce and pine. I can't recall a time ever before in my life when I've smelled these so intensely "in the wild" so to speak. My experience has been that you smell this when you cut the bottom off your Christmas Tree or when someone sprays pine scented air freshener around or burns a scented candle or whatever. To smell it for real - and for hours and hours and miles and miles - was a joy.
We took one more rest break near Lake Louise
Mountains near Lake Louise, BC
The "sight of the day" that sort of made our day, was a trucker by the side of the road. Why a trucker, you ask? Well, it was what the trucker was doing - it struck us both as funny and cool a the same time. See, we smelled what he was doing before we figured out it was him. The driver was parked in a turn-out along the side of the road. His rig was a sleeper tractor hauling a low-boy flatbed trailer. The trailer was empty. As we came along the road, we smelled a barbeque going - steak over coals cooking ... mmmmmmmmm. Turns out that our trucker friend had a little hibatchi grill sitting on his flatbed trailer and he was standing there cooking his dinner. How very perfect!
We rolled in to Radium Hot Springs at around 4:00 in the afternoon. We were planning to make Spokane the next night and it was only a few hours away, so we decided that we'd ridden enough today and opted to stay in Radium. We found a decently priced hotel that wasn't a flea-bag of a place and settled in for the night after supper at a German-Bavarian place.
===============================================
View Larger Map
Day Six - Radium Hot Springs, BC to Spokane, WA
September 13, 2007
385 miles, 12 hours
Today's ride turned out to be quite a bit longer than we had wanted it to be - or at least longer than I had wanted to to be anyway. We struck out for Cranbrook early thinking that we'd have the choice of riding a few DH's on the way to the border and end up on Spokane at a reasonable hour this afternoon.
Well, that didn't quite end up working out that way...
We got to Cranbrook without incendent, stopped for gas and started looking at the maps again. We had several choices that would take us west before we went south in to the USA again. We decided to ride on to Creston and make a decision there - west and the south or north then west and south.
In Creston, we decided to ride DH1 - that is, the #1 best motorcycling road in British Columbia according to the authors of Destination Highways. I had ridden this road in 2005 from north to south and I didn't think much of it at the time:
|
When the
ferry docked, I was off and riding again on DH1. I have
to agree with various people that have said that #2 should really be
#1. I can understand why Brian Bosworth and Michael Sanders rated
this road as #1, but in my mind, DH2 is a much better road to
ride. The main reasons for me are two - first, this road passes
along the shore of Lake Kootenay for basically its whole length. Along
the entire road, you're passing driveways, stores, camps,
etc. There's kids, dogs, cyclists, traffic and so forth. The road was
quite busy at even 9:00 on a rainy Saturday morning - I
can't imagine what it would be like on a hot August weekend
afternoon. Second, this road has poor sightlines in a lot of
places. The curves are great and there's plenty of them, but when
you can't see through 95% of them, you can't really ride them to the
limit and still be safe. on DH2, there's huge stretches where
four, five and six curves in a row are all fully visible and you can
link them easily and get a perfect ride out of the experience. DH2 also
doesn't suffer form all the development that lies alng DH1. It's still a fun road and a great ride with lots to look at and virtually zero straight sections for 48 miles. Personally, I'd call it #2. |
At any rate, the ferry, unbeknownst to us until we had been there for about 45 minutes, had swapped over to its "winter" schedule the previous week. So, while we got there at about 12:15 or so, the next boat wouldn't sail until 2:00 pm... that was about the time we had said that we wanted to be crossing the border. Oh well, we decided to enjoy the ferry ride anyway.
We were on with two other riders - one who knocked back at least two cans of Rainier while we were waiting for the ferry ... we gave him a wise berth after getting off the boat.
The border crossing was - well, I don't want to end up on a DHS watch list, so I'll just say the border crossing was courteous, congenial and professional and leave it at that.
We pulled in to Spokane after 6:00 pm and bascially got rooms at the first hotel we ran across. We got cleaned up and headed down the road to Outback for supper.
One thing about being back in the USA - you could tell, that's for sure ... we were in strip-mall hell there in the northern end of Spokane.
===============================================
View Larger Map
Day Seven - Spokane, WA to Portland, OR
September 14, 2007
524 miles, 13 hours
The last day.
I sometimes get moody on the last day of a trip. When I'm by myself, this isn't a problem, since the only one who's going to see me grumpy is me. But this time, of course, I had a travelling companion. I guess the realization that the trip was coming to an end after too few days, the fact that I was, indeed and for real going to be starting a new job on Monday, and a bunch of other things just sort of piled up that morning. I was not in the happiest of moods for most of the day, unfortunately.
At any rate, since we had all day to get back home and neither of us really cared if we pulled in to town at 10:00 pm or whenever, we decided to do a little sightseeing. We headed out of Spokane to Grand Coulee Dam. It was a nice ride, but it turns out that half of eastern Washington seemed to be on fire. The smoke from many grass fires was thick in the whole region and when we got to the dam, this is about all you could see of it
Grand Coulee Dam in the smoke
We spent about 45 minutes in the little visitor's center and decided to head home.
The remainder of the day was spent finding non-interstates to ride and we did fairly well at it. I think my mood finally improved somewhere south of Toppenish and I was feeling much better by the time we hit Goldendale.
We opted for I-84 home after a stop in The Dalles for gas. We pulled in to Portland around 7:30 pm, stopped at Subway for a couple of sandwiches, headed for my house and chilled for a little while before Aaron had to go home.
"How was the trip?", a couple of my friends have asked me in the days since I got home. The trip was great! I had a wonderful time. The riding and the weather were perfect, the bikes ran beautifully and I got to spend rare and extended time with one of my closest friends all week long.
However, the trip was also tempered by the fact that it's a coda for me - a bookmark slid between two chapters of my life. When I started out, I had just "retired" from the broadcasting industry. Now, I begin a new life in the remote sensing and data industry. For me, it's a little weird. I'm excited about the new job, but after a long time in broadcasting, I'm feeling like I'm in over my head a little bit with this new gig. I know I can do it, and I know it'll be a great thing for my future, but right now, today, as I sit here between careers, ready to turn that next page, I feel a little disjointed, a little foggy and a little sad. I can't tell if the trip helped that or hurt it - there were times on this trip where I had way, way too much time to think...
But, the ride is done and this will probably be my last one for a while - at least until I get my feet under me in my new career.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
GO BACK to "Bikestuff" home
A few links
BMW Motorrad | Ducati Motorcycles | Ducati.ms Motorcycle Forum | Sport Touring Net | Adventure RiderSHOEI Helmets | Vanson Leathers | Aerostich Suits