*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

Puget Sound riders often lament that there’s no good places to go ride that aren’t completely riddled with speed traps, but perhaps what’s needed is a new place to ride.

Manila Creek Road is just such a place. While it’s not 80 miles of uninterrupted twisties like FS25, you’re not going to see much traffic here and you’re not going to see much LEO presence either. And just like the roads around Helens, there’s great roads all over this area where you can turn around and re-do a great set of curves several times without bothering the locals.

View of the Columbia from halfway up the west end:

Like the map indicates below, this road runs up over one of the series of ridges that defines NE Washington. One end is anchored at Route 155 on the the Columbia River a few miles north of Grand Coulee (with a full range of services) and the other end at Route 21 on the Sanpoil River Arm of the the Roosevelt Reservoir, a mere 3-4 miles north of the Keller Ferry. The grades on each end are rather steep as the road climbs out of the valleys, but the plateau at the top is quite nice.

In between the ends, you’ll see some of those sweet twisties that you see so rarely in Western Washington. Smooth, relatively-untravelled, and well-planned turning radii and with good signage.

In all, it’s one of a number of great roads that are scattered all over NorthEast Washington. If you’ve done this road a few times and are bored, you can go hop down through Coulee City and hit the Keller Ferry curves that come up out of the Columbia River Canyon. Or you can cruise up to the roads around Kettle Falls and Republic where you’d be able to ride for days without getting bored of the same old roads. And if that’s too far, you can always make a loop out of the neighboring Cache Creek Road, just a few half-dozen miles or so further north.

The only thing I’d truly caution you on is the occasional deer or cow and bicyclists. It seems that the regional bicycling clubs like this road for some reason.

• Counties: Okanogan, Ferry
• Length: 17 miles
• No Towns on road. Grand Coulee is several miles south of the west end down Route 155.

Google Map:

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Leading out of the Baker City, Oregon Route 86 is the most direct route out to the Hell’s Canyon area. And as one might surmise from the maps of the roadway, it might seem a bit too straight and a bit too flat if one’s gotten spoiled by the Central Oregon roads in the previous day’s riding.

Never fear, however. Route 86 really is the gateway to some awesome riding. It’s gots lots of curves in its own right over on the eastern end as you approach the river, and depending on your nights destination you can take FS 39 up to Joseph or Route 71 past Oxbow and into Central Idaho through Hell’s Canyon.

Either way, it’s really tough to go badly wrong on route selection through here. There’s lot of good riding, quite literally, every way you turn.

Once thing to be mindful of, like much of Eastern Oregon, is the fuel situation for both bikes and riders. There’s precious little civilization in the middle of the road, and services only on each of the ends. The services on the east side are highly dependent on the tourism trade and you should research you “east end” fuel and comestible stops accordingly.

View across the Baker Valley to Oregon’s Elkhorn Range. Taken by Pam Falcioni (Creative Commons)

As the picture above indicates, most of this country is what I generally call “scrub prairie”. Lots of open vistas and short trees.

A couple seasons back, I was given to preferably gas up at the village of Halfway. The gas station operator in Oxbow was reportedly “paranoid” about bikers. Most the ones I know tend to ride around in brightly-colored Goretex with flip-up helmets or whatnot, so it might just be an over-reaction to the nasty press that the cruiser folks sometimes receive.

Also, I’ve heard that there’s a nice little 12-mile route up into the hills northwest of Halfway called the Corcucopia Highway.

If any gets an update to services in Oxbow or that short spur north of Halfway, please do pop in a comment.

View out across the valley. Taken by Marius Strom (Creative Commons)

When you ride through this area, you can almost see the wagon trains coming up the trail. It’s not really changed much since then.

And be sure to watch out for deer. There’s very common along this highway.

• Counties: Baker County, Oregon
• Length: 67 miles
• Towns: Baker City, Richland, Halfway, Oxbow

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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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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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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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