*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

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Sweeper Roads
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Up in the far reaches of Northern Washington, nearly bumping into Canada even, is a wonderful little backroad perfect for sport-touring.

Why, you might ask would you go all the way up there to ride good roads? One fine reason is there’s hardly any other traffic on them. 37 miles of rural 2-lane with only the occasional farm truck and a couple dozen deer to dodge.

Most of the time at least, that is the case.

Unfortunately, when I went through they’d torn out the middle 10 miles of the road down to the bedrock. I was rather glad that I had opted to keep the quasi-dual-sport tires on the strom as the clay-ey soil would not have been fun on sportbike tires like the previous summer’s Conti Road Attacks.

And it is a good road, don’t get me wrong. I had a lot of fun on it, but the locals don’t look too fondly upon riders going much over the 40-ish mph speed limit. And the deer really are plentiful and fearless.

And even better, contrary to some reports from various mapping solutions, this road is (or will be) completely paved from end to end once construction on that center section is done.

Fuel is a bit spotty on the north end of the highway, but there’s food, lodgings, and fuel in Colville.

And this ride is quite fantastic when paired with its natural counterpart of riding Route 25 up into Northport. In fact, it’s quite the hillclimb getting out of Northport on Aladdin Road. Very steep incline that will have smaller motors working overtime, but very cool tight corners in that stretch too.

County: Stevens County, Washington
Length: 37 miles
Towns: Spirit, Northport, Colville, Aladdin

Google Map:

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Located just outside of Culdesac Idaho is one of the neat little roads tucked away up on the hilltops of northern Idaho.

It’s an amazing old road, with emphasis on Old and a double word bonus of Narrow. The road is barely the width of one and a half lanes of a modern roadway, and this one doesn’t have anything that I’d call a shoulder.

The curves are very tight and typical of Idaho, the shoulder gravel is the same color as the roadway as it’s paved with local stone. Most of the curves are very tight: most of the outside curves have no guiderail to demarcate the outside edges and the ‘inside corners’ have oncoming traffic is usually coming across the inside of your lane.

It’s a great road though and the vista is well worth the trip, not only from the top but also from many points along the way up.

This is the wide section.

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When one is asked to envision a place with jaw-dropping scenery and fantastic twisty roads, the Klickitat River Canyon is generally not the first thing on anybody’s mind. It’s set back in a little nook between the Cascade and the Simcoe Mountain north of Goldendale. The Klickitat has carved an impressive channel down through “The Plateau” as the local call it, and the view is simply incredible.

View down the Klickitat River Canyon:

While sections of the road are a bit mind-numbing in their straight-ness, the canyon corners completely redeem this road. Yes, there’s one spot where you can see in a straight line for 2 miles on the way into Glenwood. But the corners coming down off the plateau into the canyon are like driving down the side of a corrugated cardboard box. Back & forth. Back & forth.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that likes this one. Somebody marked their spot in the middle of one corner with a full-circle burnout.

View down the Klickitat River Canyon:

If you’re coming up from the end of SR142, don’t give up on it too easily. There’s some straight bit with 90-degree farm corners on the way in. Your patience WILL be rewarded.

And west of Glenwood, you have a pair of nice choices: BZ-Glenwood Highway or Trout Lake-Glenwood Road. Not bad either way.

GPS Exchange Format Track for Glenwood-Goldendale Road

• County: Klickitat
• Length: 24 miles
• Town: Glenwood

Google Map:

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As just about any decent map can tell you, 74 runs from a lonely little interchange on I-84 up by the Columbia down through small farm towns and back up to another lonely little interchange just east of Vinson on US Route 395. None of it surprising and none of it very interesting on the surface. And while you can see the big sweeping curves around the bluffs on 74 to the northwest of Heppner and the sharper squiggles to the northeast, the map doesn’t really tell you what you need to know about the highway.

Namely that this road should really be broken down into two parts because they’re quite different roadways.

The northwest leg of Route 74 is best described with: sweeper. Long ones and short ones, all running around 50mph or more. Now don’t get me wrong about them. They’re not bad, but they’re not exhilarating either, since Central Oregon can easily spoil you for fantastic roads. The valley this road runs down is mostly wheat fields and every single square foot of tillable land is planted, which means the road is shoved up against the side of the valley. There’s a few spots with a handful of really nice corners, but they’re not enough to keep a sport rider happy.

And the towns do slow you down, and then back up to speed once you’re though. But unlike your typical wetside drivers that seem to endlessly potter along at 7-under, you won’t see much of that here. There’s so little around that people are obviously going somewhere if you see them out on the road. And they’re usually hauling ass.

I was always flying through the sweepers on this road the couple times I’ve ridden it. The local were moving and obviously far more willing to flirt with the risk of getting a ticket than I.

Concerning that northeast leg of Route 74, well now. It’s a little more interesting. The road is just about completely empty on the Sunday afternoon that I rolled through. I think a saw 3 cars between Vinson and Heppner and was a little wierded by the sudden appearance of dozens of cars once I get into town.

Not to mention that when I got into town, I was suddenly assaulted by a need to instantaneously pull out my dirt riding skills. Inexplicably, the government of city, county, or state, or whatever had decided to rip the entire road out. I rode through a full quarter-mile of deep gravel that far exceeded what any rational road engineer could possibly decide is needed for chip-sealing.

And much like Route 206 out the southwest end of town, 74 has no services between US 395 and Heppner. There’s the usual services in Heppner, but nothing in Vinson except for an old service station that hasn’t sold gas since about World War II.

City of Heppner

One inescapable facet of Route 74 is the wind. I simply could not believe how hard the wind was blowing that Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t like it was all that hot as some rain showers had blown through a few hours previously. It was a consistent 30mph wind with gusts above 45. If it wasn’t for the insane amount of traction on that sharp-edged chip-seal, I probably would have gotten blown off the road and into the weeds.

And regarding getting blown off the road on 74? Well, don’t. This road has much more in the way of twisties than the NW section since it seems to frequently ascend and descend the sides of the ridge that rises to the southeast of Heppner. Serious pucker moments were had when I came around hairpin turns from the lee side of the hill into the teeth of a 45mph gust while trying to power the bike through a 25mph hairpin.

Yes, I still highly recommend this section of the road, but I also highly recommend scheduling it for the morning when it won’t kick your keister quite so hard.

Willow Reservoir Dam

• Counties: Umatilla, Morrow, Gilliam
• Length: 83 miles
• Towns: Heppner, Lexington, Heppner Junction, Cecil, Ione, Vinson

Google Map for Oregon State Route 74:

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I know a bunch of folks say these roads are boring. And I can’t argue that if you don’t enjoy open countrysides, the scenery isn’t much to write home about.

One thing this stretch of 206 offers is fast and lonely sweepers. Well, lonely if you don’t count the occasional deer in the fields and the numerable ground squirrels living along the verge of the road. At one point along the plateau a dozen miles SW of Heppner, I was seeing a squirrel scurry in front of me every easily hundred yards.

It’s fast and lonely though. Not hardly another soul on the road to hold things up. And when you do see a car coming the other way, they’re usually waving to you.

Canyon corners between Condon and Heppner:

Most notably, it also offers several sets of fantastic twisties with a canyon-edge hairpins every 10 minutes or so between Heppner and Condon. The curves really are great and there’s so little traffic that the chip-seal doesn’t get polished. The traction was simply amazing on the rural Oregon roads. It has really spoiled me for riding in Washington.

Wind farm just west of Condon:

Yeah, I was too busy strafing the curves to stop for photos in the middle.

Regarding services, it’s better than most roads in Central Oregon. There’s fuel in Heppner, Condon, and all along the I-84 freeway. There’s a little biker-friendly hotel in both Condon and in Heppner, and camping outside of Heppner on Willow Creek Road.

In between? Well, there’s not much but a couple semi-abandoned hamlets, much twisty road, and many deer.

• Counties: Gilliam and Morrow
• Length: 43 miles
• Towns: Heppner, Condon

Google Map for Oregon State Route 206 from Heppner to Condon:

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