*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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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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I must say that I’ve kind of fallen in love with the sweeper roads of North Central Idaho. The roads gently weave in between the rolling hills of trees and fields, with an occasional village with a gas station and market, with hardly any other vehicular traffic out on the road.

This particular road is perfect for a relaxing 50-60mph cruise back to your hotel in the afternoon. You just need to watch out for the extremely high concentrations of elk and whitetail deer in this area though.

One good friend got hit by a guided missile of the hooved rat variety. Bambi got her check paid in full, and said friend ended up with a seriously smashed up tourer and some well-used riding gear.

Route 8, West of Elk River

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Pioneer Highway. A nice curvy specimen of roadcraft and an apt name as well, since the road curves here and there all over the Stillaguamish River valley.

The pavement is a little rough and appears to be surprisingly light-duty for what is a state highway, after all. There’s significant bumps along the road and small narrow bridges traverse the many creeks and sloughs that criss-cross these lowlands.

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