*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

This is a truly fantastic road.

On one end of the road, you have a fairly well-maintained US Highway (US Route 12), and on the other you have one of the Snake River’s more fascinating civil engineering projects, the Lower Granite Dam.

The Kirby-Mayview Road departs US 12 at an acutely-angled intersection a few miles east of Pomeroy. If you’re coming in from Pomeroy, it’s very easy to see and just takes a quick head-check to the east for oncoming traffic and it’s into Sweeper Heaven.
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This delightful back-country highway was far nicer than my admittedly low expectations. My cohort and I were hustling along on 223 at a brisk but not unreasonable pace, and enjoying the scenery and sweepers. While this road is certainly no OR47, it has its own charms.

The sweepers are predictable and friendly, with just enough elevation changes and trees to keep things mentally-stimulating. The road is crowned on the straights, but most of the curves are properly banked making it easy to maintain a good clip without worrying about camber. The pavement is reasonably smooth too, while most somewhat-marginal roads are still bowling ball smooth for a V-Strom, my wingman fielded no complaints from atop his ZX-10R either.

The best thing about this road is its status as an amazingly uncluttered alternate to the Route 99 highways or Interstate 5, Unlike so many other routes in Western Oregon and Washington, this thing was just about completely clear. It was scary empty, actually. I don’t think we saw even a dozen oncoming vehicles in 25 miles, and had no problems passing a couple bimbling sport-tourers.
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Northwestern Oregon is a treasure trove of fantastic motorcycle roads. Many of the roads are very mountainous in nature with lots of fir trees and log trucks. This one, on the river side of US30 is a bit different. This one runs through a still hilly but far more agricultural and bucolic settings than the more mountainous setting between US26 and US30.

One key difference for me was that the curves were probably a fair bit safer. Less likely to 1) come across an oncoming log truck in my lane or 2) come across an oncoming bull elk in my lane.

There’s some pretty views on this road too. I rather like the little view down to the Columbia from the top of this bluff.

View of the Columbia near Mayger
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For those not from Western Washington, State Route 503 may need a bit of explanation. This road starts over at Interstate 5 and heads East to the village of Yale, then turns to the South and down towards Vancouver, Washington. While the West Leg of 503 is a nice little road, it’s becoming increasingly urbanized and widened and is not a topic for today. For our purposes, we’ll discuss the South Leg of Washington State Route 503.

South of Yale, 503 twists around in a surprisingly delightful fashion much like FS25 or FS90. To get curves this nice, one generally has to go to Idaho, as even the forest service roads have far worse pavement quality. The countryside up on the north end is a mix of heavy woods and semi-cleared scrubland, all overpoweringly green.

Once across the Lewis River, it settles down more into what one expects out of a Western Washington rural state highway. The curves are more “sweeper” than “twisty” with a few notable 90-degree exceptions. The countryside is vastly different too, with more open farmlands and more people.

Ultimately, of course, this road ends down in Vancouver. Pretty much straight down at that end, it’s busy and suburban. But if you’re heading north and you can put up with that for a mile or two, it’s a road that’s well worth the trip.

• County: Clark & Cowlitz Counties, Washington
• Length: 30 miles (and another 5 miles up to Cougar & FS90)
• Towns: Yale, Chelatchie, Amboy, Fargher Lake, Brush Prairie, Union

Google Map of Washington Route 503:

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State Route 9 is one of Washington State’s finer examples of a rural highway. The curves are well-engineered and most of the curves have very good visibility. The pavement is very hig-quality, to the point of being in a shockingly well-maintained state from the viewpoint of this jaded Seattle moto-commuter.

There’s also no lack of scenery along SR9. All along this route you can simply turn your head to the east and take in the farmlands and ridges with the Cascade Range peaks as their backdrop.

Mt. Baker in the distance

North of Sedro Wooley, SR9 is a very fine road tailor-made for tearing up curves and covering ground. The curves are often linked 3-4 deep with gentle banking and neutral radius. Even more delightful is the 50mph speed limit outside the villages. The State Patrol often seems to place all of their emphasis on the parallel Interstate 5 freeway 15 miles away.

Speaking of high-quality road surface, the pavement is not only very smooth but also very grippy. It’s quite obviously been re-paved in the past year or two, as the road hasn’t been covered up with any tar snakes or become polished by traffic or numerous hot/cold cycles.

A brief straightaway south of Acme.

I’ve ridden this road on a couple different bikes now as well. This road is quite well-suited to sporting standards such as the FZ6 and the DL650 V-strom. While still quite enjoyable on larger/heavier bikes such as my old v4 Sabre 1100, the abrupt nature of some of the corner entries require a slightly more relaxed pace from less sporting machine.

One thing to keep in mind is that section south of Sedro-Wooley down toward Arlington is much more agricultural in nature than the north end. The curves are less-frequently wide sweepers or even twisties, but more in the vein of alternating 90-degree turns from the old farm to markey road that they must have preceded the current roadway. The corners have been smoothed out slightly, but are still 20-25mph 2nd gear turns compared to the 35-45mph twisties and speed-limit restricted 50-ish mph sweepers north of Sedro Wooley.

MS Streets & Trips file for Washington SR9

Overview Map for Washington State Route 9:

Google Map:

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