It is often said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While I can’t vouch for the surface of that well traveled path, I can say with relative certainty that this road trip had them strewn about like so much sun-dried road kill. Unfortunately, that hardly makes this trip any different than any of several dozen others I’ve done in the last two or three decades. The story is always the same: I intend to get the bike prepped and routes laid out well in advance of the departure date, pack and load the bags the night before takeoff, then blast out of the driveway at dawn and do 100 miles before stopping for breakfast.

Of course I’d also like to wake up tomorrow morning and find I’m 22 again, which is just slightly less likely to happen.

When departure Sunday came around a big Saturday night had me smacking the snooze button a dozen or more times and when I finally achieved vertical around 9:00AM, I was faced with the reality that despite the almost solid hour of prep time I put in the day before that included researching possible routes, mounting the sheepskin seat pad, adjusting the chain, attaching the shiny new Magellan mapping GPS, transferring the XM satellite radio and antenna mount from the big green Kawasaki ZG1000 Concours, and tossing on my snazzy new Wolfman tank panniers, I was somehow still a long way from final countdown

I hadn’t packed (for me or the bike) yet, located my favorite camp mattress, or done something useful with the three quarts of Castrol 10W40 and K&N oil filter now critically eyeing me from a corner of the kitchen table. It was as if they were daring me to skip the oil change and take my chances on some Montana Jeep trail with the gods of mechanical friction. I considered that possibility while I pressed my first cup of serious Pacific Northwest coffee, but decided that a week in the saddle demanded a proper prep regardless of what it did to my departure time. Truth is, while I might be slacker than most when it comes to the wash & wax ritual, I do buy into the “pay me now or pay me later” rule of motorcycle maintenance and trip preparation because nothing ruins a perfectly good ride like reaching into the tank bag for your warmest, most waterproof gloves in the middle of a chilly mountain pass downpour only to find nothing but three dead AA batteries and a half-eaten Power Bar.

Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

Anyway, a couple of long hours later I was finally rolling, heading toward the first night’s stop at Joseph, OR and Wallowa Lake State Park. Joseph is the usual rally point for exploring the massive hole in the ground on the Oregon-Idaho border appropriately named Hell’s Canyon. At 5500’ deep it’s actually deeper than the Grand Canyon. It’s also insanely out of scale with what I expected. In short, its sheer size catches you completely off guard. When I rounded the last turn of the access road I suddenly faced a vista so spectacular that it literally stopped me in the middle of the road. I just stared at the sight for a minute or so before making my way to the parking lot attached to the overlook. I hung out for a couple hours and relaxed, trying to shed some of the bad skin that I’d been living in for the last several months. My half-assed attempt at deep thought vaporized when a KTM 990 rider showed up and proceeded to point out a nearby goat path that takes you almost to the very bottom of the big ditch. He was on a tight schedule and had to get moving, but I soon found myself shuffling over to the edge of the trail to have a look. It was steep and sketchy, but it looked doable, so I gave it about 30 seconds of consideration before going all in and pointing the DL down the canyon wall. After dropping about 3000’ feet or so, an alien feeling known to most reasonable adults as better judgment came over me, as it dawned on me I couldn’t begin to hike out of this thing should I drop the bike or have a mechanical issue. Nobody but the coyotes and the big cats would even have a clue I was down there. It’d be just my luck. I’d get killed and eaten by something big and furry because of a broken $12 clutch lever.

My newfound voice of reason screaming in my ear, I bailed out of the canyon and set the GPS destination to Lewiston Idaho. The route includes a run down and up the sides of neighboring Joseph Canyon, a pretty spectacular hole in it’s own right at 4000’ deep. What passes for a paved road is loaded with steep, tight switchbacks and when I hit the canyon floor the temperature was hovering around 110 degrees, with 40MPH cross winds, big red dust storms, and very few signs of human life. The ride up the other side was actually pretty damn fun. I counted 16 switchbacks on the way up and the temp dropped to a more manageable level as I crested the canyon rim and headed into the woods.

I rolled into Lewiston around dinnertime, which turned out to be a fairly unspectacular town on the Snake River. It did manage a decent cheap hotel with working AC, a pretty fine steak house, and a pub with live music, so I guess it rates a star or two. Still, I guess I expected more from Idaho. As it turned out, I’d get more and then some the next day.

The next morning I choked down a cup of bad hotel coffee and headed to Missoula, MT via Idaho’s famous RT12. 12 is one of those incredibly twisty and scenic wilderness roads that are fairly common around my home in the Columbia River Gorge, and reminded me an awful lot of a local favorite – Washington’s SR142, which runs along a 20 mile stretch of the Wild and Scenic Klickitat River. It’s mind-bendingly beautiful and a real hoot to ride to boot as it follows every bend of the river. Idaho’s 12 gives you all of the same sensations as you traverse its 200+ mile length. It eventually goes over the Sawtooth Range via Lolo Pass and into Montana.

Ah, Lolo Pass. While most of 12 is rolling and scenic, Lolo Pass is raw & rocky and full of twisty stuff that had me really hammering on the DL650, sliding the rear Michelin around on the rough pavement, and scaring myself silly a couple of times when I imagined what the consequences of an overshot corner or an unscheduled meeting with an Elk were. Despite the very real potential carnage, it was at that moment I felt a little life starting to seep back into me, and it felt damn good. So good in fact, that I rode harder and harder and just plain quit worrying about what might happen. I reasoned that since I was already a physical and mental mess, crashing couldn’t make things a whole lot worse, and the idea of getting killed doing something as exhilarating as this hardly seemed like the worst that could happen. In short, having little to lose is strangely liberating.

Twisted logic and wanton disregard for one’s physical well being aside, everyone with a bike and a pulse ought to do this road at least once before they lose one or both. It’s that good.

Once in Missoula I spent a couple of days just knocking around town, catching up with a couple of friends, drinking and eating too much in some very choice watering holes, riding the surrounding back roads, and just well, doing Montana.

Two Montana things took some getting used to: One, the lack of a helmet law and two, the preponderance of street legal ATV’s running around town, mostly piloted by riders with nothing between their skulls and the tons of steel in the oncoming lane but a UM baseball hat or a bad haircut. Or both. Still, I dug Missoula. It seems like a great town.

Glacier National Park was next. I spent two days there. Like Hell’s Canyon, it’s almost impossible to prepare yourself for the spectacular scenery and the outrageous riding available in and around the park. The Going-to-the-Sun Road is just off the scale. It dates to 1932 and is a 52 mile, paved two-lane highway that bisects the park east and west. It spans the width of Glacier, crossing the Continental Divide at 6,646-foot-high Logan Pass. It passes through almost every type of terrain in the park, from large glacial lakes and cedar forests in the lower valleys to windswept alpine tundra atop the pass. Scenic viewpoints and pullouts line the road, some with drop-offs so steep they scared the crap out of me when I got anywhere near the edge. You get the feeling you’re clinging to the edge of the earth by your fingernails. It seems cool now, but I remember that the sinking feeling in the pit of my gut seemed to stay with me for at least 40 of those 52 miles.

The park’s visitor facilities and campgrounds are top notch. The gift shop yielded some stickers for the saddlebags and an appropriately tacky coffee cup. When dinner time came around I had the rare opportunity to experience what could only be described as a very mediocre $13 Quarter Pounder with Cheese in one of the main lodge’s restaurants. In all fairness, the McDonald’s knock off came with a choice of a side dish, but since neither the generic Tator Tots nor the instant mashers with polyester gravy resembled something worth ten bucks, I wrote the whole experience off to being one wth the touristas and took solace in not having ordered the $19.00 Ground Sirloin Steakette. I choked down the remainder of the burger and retreated to the evening’s campsite on the far side of the park, nearly t-boning a big bear about halfway there.

I’m really glad I didn’t hit him, as he seemed kind of annoyed at the red V-Strom sliding at him in full steering lock, and probably unlikely to calmly exchange insurance cards and let Geico sort things out in the morning. Who needs attitude from the locals when you’re on holiday anyway? Certainly not me.

The next morning it was time to head west and toward home. I actually got up at dawn, packed the bike, and did the 52-mile run across the park before stopping for breakfast & much needed coffee at the main gate visitor’s complex. I ate with one hand and traced potential routes on a map spread out in front of me with the other. In a manner of minutes was joined by a BMW rider offering suggestions on getting out of Montana while avoiding Interstate windshield time. At that moment I was reminded how most touring riders, myself included, can’t stand the sight of someone planning a route alone and feel the need to offer extensive, unsolicited advice, however needless and misguided it might be. Most of the time it works out, and in this case my newest best buddy from Chicago pointed out a red, squiggly line on the map that followed the length of the Clark Fork river, ran right through the heart of Montana’s Paradise Valley, and ended up in St Regis, MT. Heading west from St Regis without jumping on I-90 looked dicey, as the map indicated there were more than 50 miles of unpaved mystery road and what looked like some serious elevation changes to transverse before I hit anything resembling pavement and mile eating speed limits. When I expressed my concerns about the possibility of getting tangled up in some backwoods nightmare, my new friend gave me a sideways look and simply said, “Hey, that’s why they call it Adventure Touring. Just go ride your bike”.

I immediately knew the guy was right. After all, it’s what I would have said had the situation been reversed. After all, sniveling about a few miles of rocks and ruts seems kind of pathetic when you’re riding something that doesn’t mind playing rough, effectively making you the Weakest Link.

As it turned out, the ride home was great, all 673 miles of it. I did it in one shot mostly because I’m a serial cheapskate when it comes to spending money on hotel rooms for just me. I actually decided to stop a couple hundred miles from home in the little burg of Ritzville, WA, but a Tom Petty concert at a nearby outdoor amphitheatre had hotel rooms in this little rat hole of a town in short supply, and the La Quinta Inn charging a whopping $179.00 (plus taxes and fees) for a single room.

The last time I was in NYC I paid $179.00 for a room at the Paramount, four blocks off Broadway. The thought of plunking down the same amount for the Ritzville La Quinta was just too much, so at 10:00PM I cracked the throttle and hammered toward home. Six stops for Red Bulls and Rock Stars and three hours later I rolled into the ranch house, where I immediately started planning the next loop at the kitchen table, well past dawn.

Of course I would have really preferred to crawl into bed and actually get some sleep. Next trip I'll stick to good old coffee on the ride home.

Cheers,

CWB