Oakridge to Home

We got a pretty early start and I was home by 3:30 pm.  What a good ride!  Found some new super good roads and also lots of familiar super good roads.  It was good to get back in the big trees and dense forest of the Pacific Northwest.  The first road of the day was the Aufderheide highway.  This is one of the first 50 designated scenic byways in the country and features lots of old-growth forest and little traffic.  It's not the most curvy road, but I have ridden it almost every year for probably the past ten years, because of the scenic value.  However, I only stopped to take the following picture:

Then after a stretch of relatively high-speed straight roads, we got to Detroit Lake and the start of forest road 46 which leads to Estecada.  This road always brings back memories of the ride that Carolyn and I did way back in about 1982.  We rode my 550cc Kawasaki two-up from Riverside to Vancouver Island and we took this highway after heading into the Cascades from Sisters, OR.  The giant trees lining the narrow road made such an impression that I think it was a big part of my wanting to live in the Northwest.  Here is a pic I took today after the road widened a bit:   It also has some neat curvy sections.

Total mileage for the trip was 2,280 in six days of riding.  Both our bikes ran flawlessly although I had a bit of snatchy drive chain that needed a lot of lube.  The bug collection by the end of the ride was awesome:

My little Ninja has almost 89,500 miles on it and still uses no oil between 5000 mile changes.  Some people get tired of a bike after a couple of years and want to try something new.  My problem is that I fall in love with them and want to keep them forever.