*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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Wikipedia has an excellent description of Oregon Route 218.

OR 218 is a fairly short rural highway. Its western terminus is in Wasco County, in the ghost town of Shaniko at U.S. Route 97. The road is very windy and hilly over its entire 43-mile (69 km) length and is a popular destination for motorcyclists. It runs through the small town of Antelope (population 50) and has a junction with OR 293 on the south end of town.

More mountainous terrain follows, and the highway crosses the John Day River into Wheeler County at Clarno. Just east of Clarno is the Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Between Clarno and Fossil (the largest town on the route, with a population of about 475), the road has several sharp curves, with a posted speed limit of 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) in several places. The eastern terminus is in Fossil at the junction of Washington Street and Seventh Street (OR 19).

This indeed does cover the bases. The raw facts if you will. It doesn’t even begin to cover the sheer exhilaration of roaring out of the tight corners with your knees skimming the pavement after having endured what’s most likely 50+ miles of WIDE US 97 sweepers with that obnoxious 50mph speed limit.

The views are simply astounding and the highway is just completely freaking empty.

View from the edge of the plateau looking down past the hairpins.

Now, I’ll freely admit that the road lulls you into a brief sense of complacency with a ho-hum straight SE out of Shaniko to the edge of the Cascade Highlands. It doesn’t last long though before it pretty much chucks you off the side of the ridge right down into a pair of 15mph hairpins and through a slot canyon into Antelope.

Running off the east side of that plateau takes you down into Antelope. If you’ve hit the day-of-the-week lottery (Wednesday through Sunday), you’ll be able to get regular fuel in Antelope. If not, you can even get a bottle of Gatorade in that town.

Clarno Palisades

View of the Valley from the Clarno Palisades

Route 218 was also the first place where I encountered the Central Oregon habit of marking and entire set of as many as 8 curves with 1 single sign marked with the speed of the slowest and tightest of the bunch. More than a little harrows when the first five corners are 45 right angles and for #6 you are confronted with a super tight hairpin with gravel in the apex. Might need an clothes iron at the end of the day to get those puckers out of the seat fabric.

And while for the most part the corners do open up into regular mid-speed sweepers East of Antelope (just 1 more hairpin set East of Clarno), it’s not like it’s the end of the fun. Those curves stay entertaining all the way until you’re a just a few tenths of a mile outside of Fossil. It beats the everliving daylights out of droning down US97 after all.

One interesting oddity about this part of Oregon is the number of old stagecoach stops and farming hamlets that used to have a few homes or houses and have all been abandoned. Some of these have reported as ‘ghost towns’ by various websites, but it seems rather amusing to me to roll by old farmhouses that are specifically listed as part of a ‘ghost town’ and see satellite mini-dishes bolt onto the side of a 100-year-old supposedly abandoned hamlet.

A few other pointers:

• I haven’t been there, but I’ve heard good reviews of Big Timber Restaurant in Fossil
• Shaniko and Antelope have lots of abandoned commercial buildings to wander around and look at if you need to stretch your legs or are waiting for someone to come bring you premium fuel.
• There’s tons of deer in Antelope and around Fossil.
• Slow down when crossing the John Day River. There’s a nice old girder bridge spanning the river there by Clarno.

Barn near Fossil off Route 218

Slot Canyon and Corners

• Counties: Wheeler, Wasco
• Length: 42 miles
• Towns: Shaniko, Antelope, Clarno, Fossil

Google Map for Oregon State Route 218:

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Back in 2007, I wrote the following and I think that it bears some further discussion:

Long known by its name, the newly minted Oregon State Route 402, is considered by some Portland sport-riders to be a destination road in its own right.

It’s a mere 35 miles long and links the towns of Kimberly and Monument and the hamlet of Hamilton with US 395 on the east end and Oregon SR19 (aka John Day Hwy) on the other.

This road is reputed as the sport-bikers dream shortcut due to its low traffic volume and excellent curves. I’m sure it is enjoyable, although I’d hate to have to decide between the southwest route of the wondrous southern leg of SR19 and heavily-patrolled US26 and the northeastern route of SR402/Kimberly-Long Creek and the also-heavily-patrolled US Route 395.

Perhaps I’m a different caliber of rider than I used to be, but Oregon Route 402 isn’t necessarily the walking-talking be-all end-all that I’d been told it was.

A nice twisty bit west of Monument. Lot of this on the west end, but a lot of straight stuff on the east end.

It’s a good road and better by degrees than Route 26, but it’s not an unbroken string of twisties for 40 miles like Route 207 between Service Creek and Mitchell or Route 74 between Vinson and Heppner. There are some very good twisty sections ascending the grade out of Kimberly and again at Schoolhouse Hill, but most of the rest is sweepers.

Irrigated valley just east of Kimberly:

Specifically, my notes for Route 402 illustrate that on the end near Long Creek the road is mostly long straights across the high prairie around 4000′. Most of the sweepers in the middle section were intermediates in the 45mph range for a Wee-Strom and the east end were limited only by ones motorcycle and aversion to being arrested.

There’s a new bridge under contruction that should be complete late summer 2009. That will greatly improve safety crossing the river at Monument.

Interesting geologic formation alonside the road. There’s a small marker near the road explaining that it’s a thousand-plus year old landslide creeping down the hill in chunks.

Please note that there’s not much left in the way of services in Long Creek. The gas station has shut down and there’s a small motel just off US 395 as you roll into ‘town’. The nearest gas is down on US26 or up in Dale. The one in Dale is only open certain days of the week and the weekends.

• County: Grant County, Oregon
• Length: 34.88 miles (per ODOT)
• Towns: Kimberly, Monument, Hamilton, Long Creek

Microsoft S&T file for Oregon State Route 402 ‘Kimberly-Long Creek Highway’

Overview Map:

Google Map:

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