*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

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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This is another one of those interesting Oregon mountain roads. I thoroughly enjoyed it, not to mention that it beats the living daylights out of taking the interstate and droning through the Blue Mountains. Nobody else seems to be on this road on the weekends, and I’d be willing to bet that it’s busier during the ski season than in the summer since the top was littered with shuttered businesses, closed ski lodges, and rentable cabins when I rolled through in June.

And you might ask, “Why’s it so great if nobody else is up there?” Sweepers. Really hot ones. Plenty of opportunity to take your open-class sport-tourer and see what it will do on a nice quiet mid-day ride.

I found it rather amusing really, since so many of the corners up there were marked with speeds that read 30-35 mph. Not sure why they were marked that way mind you, but I could easily do 50+. And the ones that were marked 45mph? They could be taken at truly righteous velocities that my Wee-Strom with its saddle-bags was just not going to attain that day.

Local Landmark:

One thing that every discussion of this area seems to contain is the weather. Even when the sky is clear blue down in the valleys, it always seems to be cloupy up on 204. The day I was down there had turned into a real barn-burner in the Pendleton and Baker valleys but it was only in the upper 60s atop Route 204 and the sun was peaking through patchy clouds that seemed close enough to touch.

• Counties: Union, Union
• Length: 42 miles
• Towns: Elgin, Tollgate, Weston

Google Map for Oregon State Route 204:

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Note: Google Maps and the other Navitech based online maps show that at least one routing of Willow Creek Road rolls right into downtown Heppner on Hager Street and the routing software really latches onto that direct route. This is not the case. From what I could see, that road has been on the bottom of the Willow Creek Reservoir for quite awhile now and the new route is on the south side of the creek and town.

Flood Control Dam at Heppner:

If you’re coming down out of the forest there’s no real way to get lost. Just roll down the pavement and enjoy the ride.

South of Heppner on Willow Creek Road is the Willow Creek Campground. At least while I was there the RV spots were 1/3 full with rather friendly elderly folks. Where I stayed in the tent section ($6/night), the ground was pretty rocky and unpleasant. But I had the tent area to myself and nobody bothered it through several days of leaving my saddlebags in the tent while I went riding for 8 hours/day.

Willow Creek Reservoir:

Halfway down the road not far into the serious ascent is the Cutsforth County Park. It’s a nice little campground nestled in amongst the trees. It’s a bit high up in the air for this flatlander-Seattleite to sleep in, but it look quite nice from the road.

One interesting thing to watch out for on FS 53 is the occasional cattle drive. Complete with cowboys on horses and herding dogs. It seriously thought I’d somehow dropped about 100 years into the past. The entire landscape up there looks like something out of a Western around Ukiah. Wide open mile-high pastureland with a cluster of buildings that just happen to be grouped togheter there for no apparent reason. Nice folks though, so be sure you wave.

Speaking of waving, it seems everybody waves to everybody there. The old folks in caddies wave. The farmers wave. When they’re not out raising hell it seems even the teenagers driving around wave. And just about anyone under the age of 14 waves to the motorcycles like their arm is gonna fall off. I think I might be making some more frequent vacation plans down that away.

One other thing to worry about is gas down there. While Heppner seems to have the only commercially-franchised gas station in North-Central Oregon, there’s no other fuel on the road and difficult to find in much of the region. Make sure you know when your gas stops are going to be open when you go through, and I recommend calling ahead a couple weeks before you leave to be sure that the place has fuel or is even still in business. I’ve heard that a lot of mom & pop gas stations have folded this summer due to low tourism.

Mural along the grain elevator. Reportedly the biggest mural west of the Mississippi:

View of Heppner from atop the hill by the dam:

Aside from these standard concerns about riding in North-Central Oregon, it’s great down there. There’s very little traffic to worry about the pavement is quite smooth and ridiculously grippy compared to the billiard-ball smooth Seattle freeways.

If you get a chance, Ukiah has one unique characteristic shared by no other town I’ve ever heard of. The school district there is so huge and so sparsely-settled that it’s probably the only public school distract in the US that is actually a boarding school. Boys and Girls dormitories more or less on the opposite ends of town, of course.

GPX file containing track for Willow Creek Road

• Counties: Morrow, Umatilla
• Length: 44 miles
• Towns: Heppner, Ukiah

Google Map for Umatilla FS 53:

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Way over in the eastern end of Oregon, is one of the most challenging sections of rural highway Oregon has to offer. Called Dooley Mountain Highway, it’s an amazing piece of road that leaves almost no time at all to enjoy, let alone ponder, the fantastic scenery from 4000′ or so feet up.

Abandoned Barn along Route 245

It’s a very technical bit of twisties going up the west flank of Dooley Mountain, and there’s not much in the way of straights between those curves either. And you can’t really call them linked in the sense that you might expect from California’s most excellently engineered roads. It’s just that there no room to put straight stretches in without running right off the edge of the mountain.

It’s really hard to emphasize how good this road is. But like everything else, there’s a few warts on a road that’s otherwise all “cake and win”. Just about every single curve on this road had gravel somewhere in the corner. Sometimes they were in the entrance and others in the exit. And not a few of them had gravel not just outside the tire lines but all the way across.

And as is typical of Oregon, the locals know these roads extremely well and generally assume that there’s not going to be anyone in the opposing lane when they come around the corner. It certainly behooves us to maintain a reasonable cornering speed and conservative line, keeping one’s vehicle and body parts well away from the center line in blind corner.

In the same vein, don’t take the speed recommendations lightly. While the signs are definitely “Oregon Corner Signs” with the speed posted as the lowest for the next half-dozen curves. If you get over-confident about those cornering speeds, that one corner out of the dozen or so will bite you hard.

Just east of Unity Reservoir

But when you get to the south end of Dooley Mountain, you need to be prepared for a little letdown. The road suddenly drops out only a flat plain that’s about as interesting as droning across Nebraska compared to what you spent the last half-hour carving. The sweepers are a little tighter around the Unity Reservoir and a welcome respite, but their not mountain curves for sure. Even US26 from Unity to “Austin Junction” is more interesting than the west leg of Route 245.

And like every other part of Eastern Oregon when I visited in June 2009, please keep an eye out for deer and elk. Everybody in the area was talking about the rider the week before that hit an elk and shattered his hip. I saw well over 20 deer “up close and personal” in just 7 days. Yeah, well and truly infested.

But if you’re looking for a rest, that little reservoir has a nice parking lot right by the lake with a driveway paved all the way in.

There’s also reportedly gas at the Unity Country Store. Verify their hours (and days) of operation first though.

Please Note: Page 55 of the Benchmark Map incorrectly reads as 204, which is the Oregon “Highway number” and note the appropriate Oregon Route number. Maybe somebody can post an explanation of why Oregon uses such a strange mix of designation systems.

• County: Baker
• Length: 38 miles
• Town: Unity

Google Maps for Oregon State Route 245:

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