Washington State Honda Sport Touring Association

8/28 - 9/1   Jasper, Alberta Recap

Since this ride had been pre-ridden two months prior, I had high hopes that many would enjoy the same scenery that I, along with Dawn and Marv, enjoyed in July.  The final headcount for this trip was 7, though more than 10 were expected for this Rocky Mountain excursion into the Great White North.  We set out to avoid the wildfires and ride many of the great roads outlined in Destination Highways BC.

When the roads cleared past Whistler, Marv invited a roadside discussion with a representative of the RCMP by demonstrating his stretching techniques while on a motorcycle.  The cop informed us that removing one's hands from the bars is far too dangerous, as was standing on the pegs.  He let Marv go with just a warning, but this put another damper on what was already an exhausting day.

After the brief detainment, we caught a great road to Lillooet, where we decided to end our day on a high note.  Splitting rooms three, four, or even five ways was a great way to reduce costs over the 5-day trip.

We continued to pick off one good road after another, making good use of DHBC.  As we made our way to Kamloops, we started to see some of the fire damage.  Hillsides were charred and the air was thick with smoke due to the stagnant air.  Once north of Kamloops, we saw many homes that had burned to the ground, including a lumber mill.  The heavy equipment was on the ground with the tires melted off.  This was quite an incredible sight since just 8 weeks prior, everything was normal.

As we returned through town to gas up for our ride down the Icefield Parkway (BC-93), Tye took the opportunity to go back to the hotel to retrieve a forgotten map.  The map was nowhere to be found, but hotel staff did interrogate him about the dirty towels (used for cleaning the bikes).  I ended up paying for those towels, but it was my own fault for leaving the evidence behind.  Most hotels will provide you with cleaning rags IF you ask.  Me, I just like buying $12 towels while on the road.  It adds to the full experience.

Once in Radium, we ate at the Old Salzburg Restaurant, the same place Peter Broda took us in 1997.  The food was good and watching unsuspecting people get sprayed with water from across the street was cheap entertainment.  At our motel, we got the last four rooms at a bargain rate (see the NE Washington write-up about the significance of this).

Remember that “quaint” little town of Kimberly that I mentioned in July…  we went there for breakfast.  After eating breakfast (no substitutions allowed), we watched a little dance festival in the center of town.  Back on the road, we set out to ride DHBC#1.

Once again, we could see trees burning on a hillside.  Helicopters were flying overhead and dropping down to the lake to scoop water and return uphill to douse the flames.  It was an incredible and still horrific sight.

As we finished DHBC#1 and approached the ferry terminal at Kootenay Bay, the attendant there would not allow the first rider to hold place for the rest of the group so we had to wait until the LAST rider arrived before knowing if we could board the ferry.  We were not that lucky.  Since we had time to kill, but not enough to eat, we picked up lunch and took it aboard the ferry.  I found out later, that this is the only ferry in BC that does not follow the "first-on/first-off" policy for motorcyclists.

We made the crossing and proceeded north to ride a counterclockwise loop around Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park.  These roads were excellent along this segment.  From there, we continued to Grand Forks for the night, where we got “great rate” on our rooms.  We ended up sharing a hotel with a softball team that stayed up all night celebrating that evening's loss.  Go figure – beer cures all woes!  The Chinese buffet for dinner left a lot to be desired but hit the spot just the same.  As my mother-in-law says, "It tastes like SH*T but you can live on it".

In the morning, we got up early enough to make it to the border crossing at Danville about 15 minutes before it opened at 8:00 a.m.  Rather than wait, we figured we would ride more of Crowsnest Highway (BC-3) and catch the next crossing at Midway.  Arriving at 8:30 a.m., a road sign stated that this crossing opens at 9:00 a.m.  We were chasing times to get back into Washington!  The next section of BC-3 was reason enough to ride to Osoyoos, which we did.  (I learned that it is pronounced O-soy-us)  We ate breakfast at Smitty’s, almost guaranteeing that the border would now be open.

It was time to settle up the tab.  I had been running a tab for most of the larger items such as food and lodging, making it easy to just total and divide at the end of the trip.  This worked great to keep all the charges together for the GST refund at the border.  Everyone settled up and we were good to go.

Having crossed into Washington, the ride home would be straightforward, riding south on US-97 to Okanagon and west on SR-20 over the North Cascades Highway.  Once in Marblemount, we ate lunch at the Buffalo Run and finished in Arlington, where we all went our separate ways.

I counted approximately 15 Destination Highways in BC and a couple in Washington accounting for 1900 miles over 5 days.  For the sake of time, we skipped a number of roads around the Kelowna area, but I highly recommend that if you have the time, don't miss them.

There were significant sections of droning, but overall the ride still rated pretty high.  The expected vistas were somewhat obscured by smoke but we did bag a mountain goat sighting.  However, we did not see any moose, therefore rendering our trip to BC incomplete!  I guess we'll have to return some day to finish the job.

September 13 - Mt Baker Recap by Marv Travis

September 19-21 - Northeast Washington Recap

We would have 7-2/3 riders:  Tye rode up from Portland the previous evening and spent the night.  We awoke to drizzling rain and ended up fighting worse-than-normal traffic because of it to get to Monroe for breakfast.  Marv was already waiting for us when we arrived, 20 minutes late.  Jim, Steve, and Dave arrived shortly thereafter and Brad and Tim caught us just prior to hitting the road.

On this first day, we would get to Colville with 420 miles under our belts.  Marv and I discussed the game plan so, leaving Monroe, it surprised me that he missed Turn 1 coming out of town onto Woods Creek Road.  After following him for a little bit (the wrong way), I decided it best to return to the last-known spot and wait.  After everyone returned (exactly how it should work), I scolded Marv, gave him an “F” in Leading 101, and reassumed lead.  We made it to Granite Falls without losing anyone.  Yes, it can be done!

At Nespelem we turned east on Cache Creek Road to SR-21, then north to Republic.  At the junction where we got gas, the attendant warned us of OPEN RANGE.  Good thing he did because we saw plenty of the bovine beauties standing alongside this stretch.  We finished up our day where we got the last four rooms at the Comfort Inn.

Now, we had an incident where our clean-up guy, Marv, missed that Tim had pulled over to relieve himself.  Thinking that he was lost, Marv doubled back to look for Tim.  I then spent some time ripping back and forth on SR-292 looking for Marv.  We all gathered up about 30 minutes later and were on the road again.

Immediately following that, we stumbled onto what was probably the best road of the weekend, Springdale-Hunters Road.  We determined that, since the DH guys only rated it as DH45, they must not have gone fast enough.  This road is WAY underrated!

Now we were also looking for food, but not the flock of wild turkeys in the road, so we traveled back to Colville to the Pizza Factory.  Fueled and fed, we super-slabbed it to Kettle Falls and still managed to attract unwarranted attention.  A Keystone cop painted us as hooligans out on a joyride, pushing other respectful motorists off the road.  Like Jim said, if a driver feels that a motorcycle is going to run them off the road, they should HOLD their position.

Reality:  When the last of eight bikes finished a pass, the last ONE was pretty close by the time an oncoming car came into sight.  Opie Taylor, a reserve officer, felt it was “reckless” and promptly picked up a cell phone to call his uncle, Andy Griffith, to harass us.  Barney Fife then showed up in his county vehicle to get the scoop.  They tag-teamed and called WSP to make sure we would behave once we crossed the county line, about 50 feet further down the road.  Andy also warned us that we would be calling Perry Mason if we did it again.

Not that we were avoiding the law, but we were still on a mission to explore more roads, which actually worked in our favor as we stayed off major thoroughfares.  From US-395, we caught Deer Creek-Boulder Creek Road heading west.  Still in cow country, many of which were on the side of the road, a junior-varsity sprinter took Tim on as he rode by.  If it hadn’t face-planted in the ditch, it may have beat him to Curlew.

Crossing SR-21 and continuing west on West Kettle River Road, I missed a turn somewhere and we popped out in Wauconda on SR-20.  Since it was near the end of the day, we went on to Tonasket and would try to pick up a majority of the missed road without backtracking in the morning.  Once again, the motel guy at the Red Apple Inn told us that we got the “last four rooms”.  If this sounds familiar, see the Jasper story above.  I’m starting to think all the motel owners got together and conspired to say that to keep you from leaving.  It just makes sense, right?

Sunday morning (another brisk one that dropped to 26 degrees), I tried to intersect the last road that we missed and complete a short loop back to Tonasket.  In hopes of cutting over, I mistakenly took a gravel road, resulting in a double U-turn to get back on track.  At this point, Tim decided to split from the group, hence the 2/3 rider equivalent on the trip.  We never did see him when we came back to the planned stop of Tonasket.