*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

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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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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Another fantastic Central Oregon route, here we have over 80 miles of nearly unbroken sweepers and hairpins in the Ruggs – Mitchell segment of Oregon Route 207. As this route does one of those strange Oregon multi-plexing things where it forms an ‘X’ across North Central oregon with Route 19, I’ll deal with this in parts.

Landscape north of Mitchell. The road is tucked in amongst the sagebrush here and there’s some hairpins hidden like a Where’s Waldo puzzle.

The northern end of 207 between Spray is an outstanding sport-tourer twisty road. It goes way up into the hills just a half-dozen miles north of the eastern OR19-OR207 split and it’s non-stop twisty bits until you’re almost into Ruggs. When I was up there last, they were doing some roadwork on the choicer twisties, but the road was so quiet that there I waited no more than a minute or two for a pickup-truck “pilot car” to lead me though.

This ‘pilot car’ driver knew how to hussle a truck around a road. We were tearing through the hairpins up around 4000′ at the crest and powering out of the wider sweepers. Even with the “reduced speed” due to construction zone, it was a hoot.

The middle part is the section that multi-plexes with Route 19 and consists more of intermediate sweepers. While many may poo-poo the high speed sweepers, it does give one a bit of a rest and something more important as well.

Sightlines. I know you’re thinking I’m daft now, but it’s quite important because Spray is the home of the stupidest mule deer in the Northwest. I had 4 deer encounters in 2 days in Spray. One riding into town. Twice on the way out of town. And I had one while I was merely standing next to the bike at the gas station! One of the ‘out of town’ ones even had the deer run at me after I’d come to a complete halt. Stupid things would have run right into me if I hadn’t dropped the clutch and scooted out of its way.

Yeah. That stupid.

Strom on the Side of the Road on the Southern Section of 207:

The one reason Spray’s rather important is that it’s the only gas station on this route that is open Monday through Friday during business hours. I don’t think they have Premium fuel though, but it’s called the Lazy Wolf Resort. Nice folks.

The third section is the desolate twisty bits between Service Creek and Mitchell.

There’s no civilization here and it goes right up a steep grade shortly after you make the turn onto 207. It’s all up & down and side to side on this road. My ‘Come Ride with Us’ maps (courtesy of Bill Hutchinson and the advertisers) said this road had 122 curves in that short 22 miles. I don’t doubt it for a moment though as you’re way too busy watching the road, the awesome scenery, and still keeping an eye out for the stupid deer (since you’re only a few miles away from Spray still).

There’s gas in Mitchell on some days of the week, but not on Mondays. Don’t be confused by the gas pump you see across the street from the post office. That’s supposedly been shut down for years. There’s another guy further up the main street from the highway. And there’s no Premium gas at all last I checked.

If you’ve got to have Premium or it’s a Monday, I recommend Dayville even that it’s a fair hike.

One final note after reviewing my last trip diary: The roads within the National Forest are generally not paved as well, but are more technical in nature and more challenging. I’d use these section of road to hone your cornering and curve-reading abilities and use the wider but smoother corners at lower elevations for the high-speed stuff.

• Road Name: Oregon Route 207 (Heppner-Mitchell)
• Counties: Morrow, Wheeler
• Length: 80 miles
• Towns: Hardman, Mitchell, Ruggs, Service Creek, Spray, Spring Valley

Google Map for Oregon Route 207:

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Now, don’t act all surprised that I’ve posted yet another old highway alignment. This one however is rather nice and much twistier than the parallel Interstate 90 a few miles to the south.

This one is quite a bit of fun, actually. It winds along the valleys that lead down to the Columbia River and passes some rock quarries and a large windmill installation on the north side of the road.

There’s lot of fun to be had on this expanse of lightly-traveled chipseal, but apparently there’s been a number of accidents as well. Some WSDOT pages I’ve seen indicate that this road has been designated a “Safety Corridor” so it would be wise to keep your speed down to a reasonable level and keep an eye out for other traffic in additional to one’s usual vigilance for law enforcement.

Columbia River Photos, near Vantage:

Photo by Jami Dwyer (CC: AT)

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This road is one of those little country roads that ends up being curvy by virtue of the fact that it has to go in between existing farms, and it’s conveniently situated to go over to the town in the next valley. It’s a tableau full of sweepers, executed in chipseal with excess-gravel shoulder, but otherwise it’s a good grippy surface without much in the way of heave or buckling and no tar snakes.

One note of concern for sportbike riders and newbies: East of Lenville Road, this road is gravel. You’ll get up to a fork in the road: on the left is the Lenville road which is gravel, and on the right is the continuation of Genesee-Juliaetta Road which turns to gravel shortly after the bridge.

I was in a bit of a hurry so I did not do the entire gravel section, but the section I did was quite washboardy.

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