*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

Note: This isn’t any particular road, but rather a serious of loosely-connected roads that allow one to thread their way through some surprisingly empty country laying between Interstate 90 and WA SR26.

The Inner Passage holds a marked allure for me. Usually, when I am trying to get an event or a function, I’m in a hurry. I want to meet my friends, have supper, and enjoy myself before turning in for a good night’s rest. On the way home, I’m feeling mellow and reminiscent, and that where roads like this one come in.
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This road is not the normal kind of road you see posted here at Motorcycle Roads Northwest. For one, it has 23 miles of graded gravel. For another, there’s quarter-mile long two-tower suspension bridge out in the middle of nowhere that goes over the Dworshak Reservoir. For a third, the southern paved section (below the bridge) is so tight that I’m surprised I wasn’t passing the back-end of my bike coming the other way on those switchbacks.

Heading west out of Orofino, There’s a little road that goes alongside the north edge of the river opposite US 12, and on that road is a very well-marked turnout for Wells Bench Road. This road climbs right up the side of the huge cliff that overhangs the valley floor, and it really does twist back and forth through the narrow canyon going up to the top.

Way up at the top of the canyon, after having ridden a good eight to ten or so very tiring miles up the side of the escarpment, you come to a wonder. There’s a huge pull-off overlook area (about 2/3 acre?) that looks down over the reservoir and the quite majestic Dent Bridge some hundreds of feet below.

Dent Bridge. 1,550 feet long, one of the longest in the world.

About a mile north of the bridge and likewise a mile south of Elk River, this road turns to gravel. It’s definitely not a primitive road, as the roadbed is obviously graded from time to time, and it is packed well enough that the ‘Strom only bogged down in deep stuff when I got too close to the edges of the road.

Up at the top of the road is Elk River. Elk River’s a neat little place, apparently populated by 10x as many ATVs as cars, and home to Elk River’s Huckleberry Heaven.

Just be careful of deer and elk while you’re out that way. This whole area is just crawling with the eponymous hooved rats, as a good friend of mine discovered to his detriment while coming into Elk River from the west on the tarmac. His touring rig was completely totaled, and he’s extremely lucky to suffer little more than scrapes and used-up riding gear. On that same day, I saw a fawn being born right on the roadside heading up towards the bridge overlook and many more deer grazing the surrounding hillsides.

• County: Clearwater County, Idaho
• Length: 42 miles
• Towns: Orofino, Elk River

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This little stretch of sweepers is quite a bit of fun and a nice way to skirt a large section of Interstate 5. While it’s 35 mile per hour speed limit causes it to be a rather leisurely way to cover this distance, it is also fairly empty and doesn’t appear to be heavily patrolled.

South Military Road route is veritably lined with evergreen trees. I estimate there is at most an eight foot buffer between the road and the forest in most sections. The buffer does help quite a bit in spotting the numerous deer that line the road. If the deer are hiding in the tree line in preparation for their kamikaze dash in front of your bike, you’re going to have very little response time before impact.

One note of caution for those looking to blast down this road at wildly extra-legal speeds, I’ve never seen any evidence of repaving in the years that I’ve been riding this road down to Portland. It looks like a very old alignment of US 99 that has been asphalted over, tar-snaked as needed, and otherwise left to slowly rot in place.

Like Jackson Highway, this road is another great means to avoid the thundering herd on 5 and take a more relaxed 4th-gear approach to traveling. This scenery isn’t spectacular and the service sparse, but your blood pressure will likely be much lower on this road. Just look out for the deer.

As you arrive east of Vader, things are a little different. Starting where Military Road crosses over Route 507, the road changes its name to Westside Highway and is still a state highway in this area. This road is maintained much better, and is far more frequently traveled. Obviously, it has less curves and wider lanes, but is still a pretty good way to avoid the lunacy that is
Interstate 5 in the late afternoon.

As you get to the terminus of SR411 at Kelso, you’ll need to head back east on SR4 to get across the river and back to I-5. If you’re heading south, you can go straight at SR4 and continue skirting around Longview and cross over the Columbia to Oregon via SR433.

• Towns: Napavine, Vader, Longview, Castle Rock, Winlock
• Length: 33 miles
• Counties: Lewis, Cowlitz

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US97 is a dry side road. It wends its way up from the Columbia along the valley floors, scatterings of abandoned pastureland and hardwood pines punctuating the Eastern Cascade scenery. The views are impressive and the highway is as well-paved as it is desolate on our mid-October weekend excursion.

At one fairly flat spot south of Satus Pass, you can stop at a roadside marker where you can see four of the Cascade Range Volcanoes: Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and Rainier further in the distance. A wide vista of the valley floor, all the way up to the Cascade foothills can be enjoyed there. I highly recommend a short visit, as it’s a good spot to turn around if you want to go through the sweepers again.

View of Mt. Adams from the Cascade Volcano Viewpoint along US97. Very pretty, and a nice place to stop on a very lonely road.

Along Satus Creek and across its namesake mountain pass, the roads curve along the walls of the canyon. The sweeper are clean and infrequently traveled, and the revenue enhancement patrols were simply not in evidence on that sleepy weekend. The few State Patrol cruisers we saw were not very interested even in our fairly elevated speed.

Between Toppenish and Satus Pass, US97 passes through the lands of the Yakama Nation. There are relatively few homesteads along the route and a number of side-roads dead-end about an eighth of a mile from 97. The posted speed of the road is quite liberal for a two-lane US route, and ascends several of the large ridges between the Yakima River and the southern Columbia.

US97 up near Satus Pass, much high-altitude greenery

North of Toppenish, US97 is not worth mentioning as it’s an arrow-straight 1960s-era concrete freeway just like any other character-less freeway in the Midwest. North of Union Gap a few miles further, US97 multi-plexes with Interstate 82.

At Maryhill, US97 crosses the Columbia and enters from Oregon, where the average driver isn’t even trusted enough to pump his own gas. Heading west from Maryhill (and where you end up if you miss the left-hand turnoff to cross the Columbia and stay on 97 South) , is Washington SR14. A real gem of a road, and was once a US three-digit route as an alternative to US30/I-82 over on the Oregon side of the river.

This route was largely that taken by Lewis & Clark on their expedition in the very early 1800s, and is known as the Lewis & Clark Highway.

• Towns: Toppenish, Goldendale, Maryhill
• Length: 59
• Counties: Yakima, Klickitat

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Sagebrush Flats Road
courtesy of John O’Callaghan

Central Washington’s arid country often appears barren and drab to the casual, unfamiliar eye. But take a ride on some of our backroads and travel against the grain of I-90 and US 2 to find some sweeping vistas, dramatic coulees and even the odd winding road. While most of the farm and range land in this part of the state is transversed by section-line straight roads, there are topographically friendly lines to be found that provide fun rides through beautiful country.

Sagebrush Flats Road is a typical county road in Grant County. Re-surfaced in the last four or five years, it climbs at a moderate rate, north, out of the City of Ephrata over the Beezley Hills into Sagebrush Flats at the Grant County/Douglas County line. This nice stretch intermingles sweeping curves and short straights. The name changes to Rimrock Road as it crosses the county line in the middle of a longer straight away. Up and over the Rimrock area, you drop down into the middle section of Moses Coulee and wind north along the west side of the coulee to US 2. Two sharper curves will make you pay attention, but otherwise it’s nice quick sweepers. There are four cattle guards, but they can be taken at speed as long as they are crossed straight on.

Sagebrush Flats Road, looking North

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Doing the Coast? Plenty of fuel and don’t want to slog through downtown Aberdeen? Have we got a road for you.

SR107 runs right along the Willapa River and gives you a very nice shortcut between US101 and US12. The road is chock full of sweepers and a very reasonable 50mph speed limit. I don’t recall any particularly sharp corners on this highway, and I was able to maintain a brisk pace through the length of the highway (except for the washout). The roadway is definitely designed around efficient travel, with the jumbled mass of hills, valleys, and outcroppings, WSDOT wouldn’t ever be able to make this highway an arrow-straight freeway.

Of special note is a little roadway located halfway down SR107, namely Blue Slough Road. A very nice road, with tighter curves and a lower 35mph speed limit.

Nasty washout on SR107. Taken from the exit of one of the nicer corners.

Simply put, SR107 is another one of those sweeperish roads whose scenery is nothing to write home about. What you get out of the deal is a very nice road with lots of curves and no pressing need to stop and take pictures.

• Road Name: Washington State Route 107
• Counties: Grays Harbor
• Length: 8
• Towns: Melbourne, Montesano, Preachers Slough, South Montesano

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This highway runs along the Snake River south of the Hells Canyon Recreation Area for some 15 miles, after which it heads southeast to Cambridge.

Before the road splits away from the river, you get to experience a few miles of complete twisty bliss south of the Brownlee Dam where the impounded waters of the Brownlee Reservoir force the water up onto the hillsides and thus this road has to follow the hillsides perfectly.

• Road Name: Oregon/Idaho Route 71 (Copperfield, OR-Cambridge, ID)
• Counties: Baker, Washington(ID)
• Length: 40
• Towns: Brownlee (OR), Cambridge (ID), Copperfield (OR)

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US Route 197 is a rather odd high desert highway. When you’re on this highway riding up on top of the bluffs, it’s quite dull. Seriously, it’s flat, dead-straight, and boring as all get out.

Then you get to the edge of the bluff and there’s a suddenly a sign telling you about a hairpin turn ahead. You go through the turn and look down the length of the valley and see another half-dozen tight corners that are worthy of The Spiral Highway in Clarkston. You polish those lovely curves off, trundle through town, and do another half-dozen or so back up the sides of the valley and back into the flat and dead-straight.

Yes, behind those hills (near Maupin) there’s a dozen or so fabulous twisties. You really wouldn’t know it from here though.

And yes, that speck behind my bike further down the road is a rider turning around to make sure I’m okay. One of three complete strangers on bikes that stopped in the course of my 10 minute photo and hydration break.

Oregon Cascades and foothills surrounding Mt. Hood. Photo taken north of Maupin.

• Road Name: US Route 197 (Central Oregon - The Dalles)
• Counties: Klickitat, Wasco
• Length: 63
• Towns: Criterion, Dufur, Maupin, Smithville, The Dalles, Tygh Valley

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Pioneer Highway. A nice curvy specimen of roadcraft and an apt name as well, since the road curves here and there all over the Stillaguamish River valley.

The pavement is a little rough and appears to be surprisingly light-duty for what is a state highway, after all. There’s significant bumps along the road and small narrow bridges traverse the many creeks and sloughs that criss-cross these lowlands.

To someone who grew up as a Midwestern farmboy and got transplanted to Upstate NY for a decade, this scenery is quite nice. It’s not Cascadian with its rough tree-covered ridges, but rather the soft and not-quite flat topography that I once called home.

It seems that I only get up into this part of Washington in the autumn, and as in other autumnal visits, the geese were all over the fields. On the rare early spring forays into this area, you can see the green shoots poking up through the dark, silty loam with all their promise of spring. Plus, if you’re a fan of abandoned barns, you’ll find many of them here.

• Road Name: Washington State Route 530, Pioneer Highway
• Counties: Skagit, Snohomish
• Length: 17
• Towns: Conway, Milltown, Silvana, Stanwood
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