Road trip #1

Day 1

Saturday morning Sarah and I took the MSF Experienced Riders’ Course down. It was a good class, I learned a few things and I found some things I need to practice some more. It was definitely worth the time and the money, even if it did mean getting up at 6:00 and riding all the way down to Tacoma.

After the class we rode back home, grabbed some lunch, packed our gear on the bike and headed back out. We took the back-roads, of course, up to Monroe, then followed Hwy 2 east across Stevens Pass. Stopped in Leavenworth – our local “Bavarian” town – for bathroom and some coffee.

From Leavenworth we continued on Hwy 2 to Wenatchee. Hwy 2 is a nice ride… forests, mountains, rivers, etc. We took our time and enjoyed the scenery (which had nothing to do with being worn out from getting up at 6:00 and then doing the 5 hour riding class). We lucked out in Wenatchee and got the last room in the hotel, and from the sound of things it was one of the last rooms in Wenatchee. Took a stroll to find dinner, then called it a night. Mileage for the day: about 240 miles, not counting the range time at the riding class.

Day 2

Sunday morning we stuffed ourselves on the “free” breakfast at the hotel, gassed up the bike, and headed north on Hwy 97 Alt. “Alt” because a semi ran off the bridge between Chelan Falls and Chelan, damaging the bridge, so that route was closed. The stretch up through Entiat to Chelan was a definite change from the forests of Hwy 2, with rocky bluffs and sage brush on both sides of the road. Sarah spotted a couple bighorn sheep up in the rocks. I think Lake Chelan was pretty, but I’m not sure… there were way too many other tourists on the road in that area, so I couldn’t do much sight-seeing.

We continued along 97 up through Okanogan, Omak, and Tonasket all the way to Oroville, where we were apparently so close to Canada that AT&T couldn’t tell the difference. While we were getting lunch and gassing up the bike I received a text message from AT&T informing me that I had entered an international roaming area and super expensive data rates were in effect. Yay.

Out of habit, I gassed up the bike whenever we stopped somewhere for food or bathroom, but one thing I noticed on this trip was the huge difference between the 140 mile range of the old bike and the 300 mile range of the new bike. It was the difference between stopping at every town because there’s no telling how far the next gas station is and just riding knowing I’d need a stop long before the gas tank would. It definitely made heading off into the unknown a lot more comfortable.

From Oroville we headed east on county roads to Molson. According to our Ghost Towns of the Pacific Northwest book, “Molson is the best ghost town in central Washington.” It was actually more like two ghost towns… part of it dated from the early 1900′s, the other part looked like it died sometime in the 50′s or 60′s. There are apparently still 35 people that haven’t realized it is a ghost town, though I’m not sure exactly what they do in Molson.

Apparently Molson was quite the trading hub in the early 1900′s, serving all of north-central Washington as well as south-central BC. Once the mines petered out and the railroad left, the town died.

There’s a museum in what used to be the schoolhouse, but the down-side of traveling on a holiday weekend is that things like museums aren’t open. From the outside it looked like… an old schoolhouse.

In that last photo, notice the “shingle mill” on the left. From the size of it I think they could probably only handle one shingle at a time.

From Molson we headed east to Curlew, via Chesaw and Toroda. Right outside Molson is a sign pointing to the left that says “Chesaw  - 5 miles”. What it didn’t say was that it was 5 miles of hilly gravel road. The road was actually in really good condition, as gravel roads go, but touring bikes with highway tires aren’t made for gravel roads, so it was a rather nervous 5 miles on a rather squirrely bike. Once we got past the gravel, though, the roads were awesome. Two-lane twisties, winding past farms/ranches and through the forest, and apparently nobody else in north-central Washington was driving that day.

Despite what the book says, Curlew didn’t really look like much of a ghost town. There’s a hotel that was built in 1906 (now containing a museum which was, of course, closed), but around it is what looks like pretty much any small farm town. The hotel does have pressed tin siding. Don’t know why, but the pressed tin siding always looks neat to me.

From Curlew we back-tracked a ways, which I really didn’t mind because those empty, twisty roads were so much fun! We did have to pause along the way for this very important state park:

We continued along county road number something-or-other until we hit county road number something-else, and headed south.

County road number something-else was supposed to run right past Bodie, according to the ghost towns book. It actually runs right through Bodie, and going through Bodie takes so little time that we missed it and had to turn around and go back. Bodie is a proper ghost town, in that there aren’t any silly living people hanging on and pretending to live there. Bodie was founded in 1896 on Bodie Creek, then picked up and moved a mile north to where gold was found. Several mines were worked in the area until about 1940, then the mines, and the town, died. Random factoid: one of the mines was owned by the Wrigley brothers of chewing gum fame.

From Bodie we continued south through Wauconda, still enjoying the blue skies, warm sun, and totally deserted twisties. Until we got about halfway between Wauconda and Tonasket, when the skies suddenly turned black, lighting started flashing all around us, the wind came up and started blowing us around, and the rain started pouring. We made it to Tonasket and took shelter in the first gas station we saw, along with a couple other bikers. They had just come east through Winthrop, and assured us that the weather there was absolutely horrible and that the town was full of tourists and none of the motels had vacancies.

Hah! Once the rain stopped, we headed on west to Winthrop, where the weather was beautiful and the first motel we stopped at had a room for us. And there was a great pizza joint just a short walk down the road.

Total mileage for the day: about 360

Day 3

The “free” continental breakfast in the lobby looked like it was worth about what they were charging, so we decided to head out and find breakfast along the way. There was a little more traffic on the road, but not too bad, and it was still beautiful scenery and very, very nice twisty roads. Well… except for a couple stretches of fresh chip seal. But the rest of the road made up for those. The passes along the road were appropriately named… when we went over Washington Pass we determined that we were, in fact, in Washington, and when we hit Rainy Pass it was definitely raining.

We followed Hwy 20 to Rockport, then down 530 to Arlington, then Hwy 9 to Hwy 522 to Hwy 202 to home.

Total mileage for the day: about 190 miles.

‘Twas a good ride. Forests, lakes, waterfalls, high desert, farm land, and lots and lots of twisties.