Dalles Dual Sport

Orv and I trucked the KLXs over to the Dalles in the Columbia Gorge to do some dual sport riding with Dave B.  Dave used to live in Portland and at one time belonged to the same motorcycle club as Orv (Lobos, MC), where they met and became long time friends.  Here's Dave:

Dave is pointing to a road I had asked him to lead us on.  I had seen a video of it on some website and it looked pretty interesting.  Here you can see it heading down toward the river:

This is an old road that led to a bridge that used to cross the Deshutes river below.  There was no toll on the bridge so it was called Freebridge Road, or maybe it was called Rattlesnake Grade, I forget which.  Anyway, there was another bridge not too far away that did charge a toll, and Dave said that one day the free bridge mysteriously blew up. 

The road is now barely passable by 4WD vehicles and motorcycles because it is narrow, rocky and rutted.  I made the following video on our ride back up the road.  It seemed a lot more gnarly than how it looks in the video.  I guess the rocks and ruts don't show up so well, or else my definition of gnarly is pretty lame. 

After the Freebridge road we explored a lot of ranch land that apparently had a lot higher population at some time in the past.  Dave showed us a couple of abandoned school houses out in the middle of nowhere.  Here is one:

And here is another one:

Dave has studied the history of the area and said the kids only went to school four hours per day because they had so far to travel to get to the school, and it was usually on horseback.  It had to have been some cold windy rides during the winter in this windswept country.  The early pioneers valued  education.   Usually one of the first buildings they erected (after saloons) throughout the west was a school and a church. 

But they also had fun.  Dave knew where there was an old dance hall so we went by there.  Like everything else, it seemed to be out in the middle of vast open country with no other buildings around.:



There was a stage:

And a sort of kitchen in the basement:

And we even found the remnants of an old piano:

I bet there were some high times in that old place.  I figured the building was from the early 20th century, but we found some rigid electrical conduit with junction boxes pretty similar to what we use now.  I don't know when that began to be used, but maybe in the 50's. 

We rode almost exactly 100 miles and I have no idea where we went as I was just following Dave and Orv, but it was perfect dual sport exploring on roads that are seldom traveled.  Just what I hoped to do when I bought the KLX.