Not Quite The Ride We Planned

I found out about a ride that a group of friends from the PNWmoto forum put on every year around the first weekend in May and decided to join them. They head for Kamiah, Idaho where they all stay at the same motel and gather at some bar in the evening after riding local roads. I made a reservation and invited all my riding buddies to come along. Only Big Mike took me up on the offer. Came the weekend of the ride and there was rain predicted all along the route for all four days of our planned ride. Both Mike and I postponed to the next week when better weather was predicted and we could choose to only ride on week days. One reason I was especially interested in the route was that I could include a road that Carolyn's nephew, who lives in Idaho, had said was super curvy. It is highway 14 to Elk City, and is a dead-end paved road at Elk City. It would take us two days to get to Kamiah because we chose to include some good roads in Eastern Oregon that we had ridden before. One of these roads was a paved forest service road between Heppner and Ukiah. There was a sign just outside of Heppner that said the road was not maintained, but we didn't think much about it. Not too long afterward we came upon a slight bit of snow on the road and stopped to take a picture of what we assumed was a unique opportunity to see snow on a road in mid May.

Then we went a little further and there was even more snow:

And finally it got really bad. There was a single car track that had got down to bare pavement and that allowed us to get through. During the process, though, I went over a small patch of snow and came as close to crashing without actually crashing as I have ever done. The front wheel was sliding and I was going down, but I think I got back to clean pavement and caught enough traction to be able to force it back upright.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but the next morning Mike was not feeling well at all and reluctantly decided not to continue. He ended up staying in the motel another night and had his wife come a get him with a U-Haul trailer for the bike. He had not eaten for two days and was weak and slightly feverish and in no condition to ride. I continued on, being a bit more cautious riding alone. Just shortly after I started out I came upon a herd of Buffalo that must have belonged to some rancher. There were quite a few of them and not what you expect to see in Oregon:

They were heading towards me so I waited and this fellow got pretty close:

When I got over into Idaho I was impressed with how green everything was and all the creeks and rivers were raging with Spring snowmelt. There was some beautiful scenery:

I did ride to Elk City, and the road was pretty curvy, but what Carolyn's nephew didn't mention was that the pavement was pretty broken up, so that much of the ride I was searching for smooth routes rather than blitzing the curves. On the way home, I planned to spend one night in Walla Walla, but on my way there I went through Lewiston Idaho and decided to take a little detour and ride the Old Spiral Highway again. I think this is my favorite road of them all, and I have ridden it and written about it before in this blog. I had ridden it uphill on my way to Kamiah and this time I was going to do it downhill. At the top I met a couple of Canadians who had trailered their sport bikes down and were riding many of the same roads that I had just covered in the past three days, including the road to Elk City. They were brothers-in-law and friendly types and we had a nice conversation, during which they asked me my age (being an obvious old guy). When I told them I was about to turn 82 they were impressed that, being in their 50's, they might have another 30 years of riding ahead.

I choose a place to stay in Wall Wall using Booking.com from my phone on the way there. I was looking for a place close to downtown so I could walk to a place to eat dinner. When I navigated to the address, I saw nothing that looked like a motel, or had a sign. I went by the address again and still no clue, so I called the number and got a guy who said he would stand out on the curb and flag me in. Turns out the place was an old converted mansion that is in a neighborhood that probably will not allow them to identify as commercial lodging. It was a real cutsey place with a wine tasting theme and lots of outdoor spaces with a hot tub and lounging area. Being an old mansion, it had very high ceilings, which meant there were lots of steep stairs to get to my second floor room, and lugging my gear up there after a full day of riding was no picnic.

So it was a bummer that Mike caught the flue or something and we didn't do the ride together as planned, it still turned out to be a good ride for me on some of my favorite Good Roads.