*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

Everyone that’s persevered sufficiently to read much of my writing knows that I’ve got a thing for old roads. New roads are fun and they’re fast, but they don’t satisfy me unless they have a bit of history behind them.

This one doesn’t sound spectacular, but it’s a great little road that usually gets you away from the weekender traffic putting along 101 and it’s a twisty little beast of a rural backroad that is the current 101′s great-grandpa.

Between Wheeler/Nehalem and the Seaside/Cannon Beach sections of the coast, this used to be the only way to get there. I can’t imagine how horrible the traffic must have been back then, because this little road is seriously twisty. It flips back and forth and goes right up one river valley and down another, and little more than a handful of places with a couple hundred yards of straight stuff.
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This a classic forest road in the rural backwoods of Western Washington. Nestled within the glacial river valleys that once drained Puget Sound down to Grays Harbor, this road is bracketed throughout its entire 24 mile length by ridges, ponds and hillsides.

Just as you would expect from geography and location, the road is tree-lined pretty much from end to end. And just as you would expect from such a rural thoroughfare, you have the spectre of the dreaded hooved rat.

I had one very-close encounter of the antlered-kind, and two wherein deer were fleeing up the hillside by the time I got there. One of those deer in the middle section of the road was so confident that it stood in ground in the middle of the road until I was almost to a full stop.

This road is one of the older routes between Shelton and Elma. It’s been superseded by newer roads, and its state of maintenance is apparent. It still has mileage markers telling you where you are on the road, but it no longer has the smooth surface of a modern highway.

Much of the road on the extreme ends are still made up of the original concrete slab roadway as well. Obviously, the surface is extremely bumpy and rides much like Interstate 5 South near Tukwila. In between, where the deer are, is a much more enjoyable smooth asphalt surface with excellently-radiused curves.

I really like this road. While it definitely has a high deer quotient, it’s rather rewarding of smaller motors like the V-Strom where keeping the motor perking is the answer rather than monster torque.

• Counties: Mason, Grays Harbor
• Length: 24 miles
• Towns: Elma, Shelton

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This is another member of the Grangeville Gang. And no, this road is not named after a mountain, at least not directly, but after a town that at one time was more important than Grangeville.

This road is very sparsely travelled as Mount Idaho isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. The road has a few new houses built along it though as the views are quite nice. Not sure I’d want to live up there in the winter though, as I bet it snows like nobody’s business.

In the summer though, this road is a giggle. I thoroughly enjoyed ripping up it at a good clip, and didn’t see a single vehicle until I was into “downtown” Mt. Idaho and not another one until I was right back into Grangeville.

You also don’t have the impressive vistas that you can get with Harpster or Whitebird. Instead, you have a load of fun on a road that isn’t so challenging that the novice is tired after a run or two. You might need more gas in Grangeville after you’ve done the Harpster-Elk City-Mt. Idaho Loop though. This is some seriously rugged country.

Right in the middle of Mt. Idaho at the curve in the main road you can see the back of a Idaho State Historical Marker, which reads:

In 1862, a noted Western scout, Mose Milner, started Mount Idaho on his gold rush trail to Florence. Camas Prairie’s major early town soon grew up here. But when civic leaders resisted a farm effort to organize a grange there in 1874, Grangeville grew up as a better-located town. Although Mount Idaho became county seat from 1875 to 1902 and had an important Chinese community, Grangeville soon surpassed its older rival. Most of its early buildings have disappeared.

It’s not terribly picturesque, but gives a view of the valley to the south.

• Towns: Mount Idaho
• Length: 9 miles
• County: Idaho County, Idaho

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An interesting side road will take you up into the small town of Mineral. It’s a far more twisty road than SR7 with very short sightlines.

The north end of the road is particularly aggressive with the road making a nearly continuous climb up the north face of the ridge the village of Mineral it sited on. The pavement isn’t in terrible shape, but it’s apparent that large recreational vehicles and trailers frequently go up this road.

The south turnoff is about 13 miles north of US 12, and the north turnoff is less than a mile south of the River Crossing at Elbe. If memory serves, there’s a neat abandoned power station by that turn-off.

• Towns: Elbe (nearby), Mineral, Carlson (abandoned)
• Length: 5 miles
• County: Lewis

Microsoft Streets & Trips file for Mineral Hill Road

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Green River Road winds from Auburn up to Kent along the Green River. It’s one of those road I take when I’m not in a terrible hurry, in that it does get you from A to B, but it also gets you a bit more relaxed.

This sleepy road has more or less been in cold storage since WWII. East Valley Highway bypassed this route many decades ago when the hamlet of Thomas evaporated into the WWII internment camps. There’s no shops along this road anymore, and today only a few large produce farms keep the soccer fields and golf course company.

Soccer Fields alongside Green River Road, North of Auburn

For those of you who are old road buffs, I have reason to believe that Green River Road is a part of the very long windy road that used to go all the way up the banks of Green River to Tukwila, connecting to what used to be Orillia and extending up to what is now Southcenter Parkway.

It’s not a terribly busy road. It’s certainly not an empty road such as those halfway up into the Cascades, but it’s not exactly I-5 either. If you’re looking for a quick spin around the block on a sunny summer evening, this one fits the bill.

View to the South, down Green River Road

This quintessential river road follows the Green like it was painted on. The entire southern part of the road matches the river sweeper for sweeper. Since it necessarily a twistly little ribbon of ashalt, it’s been saved from the helpful auspices of the WSDOT, and since there’s a public gold course and soccer fields along the road, it’s been allowed to remain open to traffic from both ends, unlike nearby Frager Road.

The north end of GRR turns west and meets up with the modern East Valley where the Kent East Hill takes a jog to the west. The south end starts on the outskirts of Auburn in the northernmost part of town that isn’t nearly as heavily-traveled as the western freeway-enabled section of that suburb, and the parks alongside the road provide a good place to sit and enjoy the weather as the exhaust gently ticks beneath you.

• Towns: Auburn, Kent
• Length: 4
• Counties: King

Microsoft Streets & Trips file for Green River Road

Overview Map of Green River Road (Kent / Auburn, WA):

Google Map:

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