2800 miles across Washington, British Columbia, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, OR-completed

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My friend Justin and I recently completed what is now becoming our annual ride. Last year, we did our first trip which was five days from Portland down to Yosemite and back. This year I upgraded from my SV650 to a SV1000 and Justin is still on the Z750S.
The ride almost didn't happen this year due to my accident in June in which my original (black) SV1k was totalled. I knew I knew I needed to get back on the horse, and what better way than a nine day 2800 mile journey, right?

Day One:
We left my place in NE Portland around 8:30, July 26. the goal was to take Hwy 14 east and then head north on 97 through Central Washington. We figured we would stay at Lake Chelan. I had checked it out on the net and it seemed like a fun resort town.
Highway 14 was fairly boring to me as it is basically in my backyard and I ride it several times a summer. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun road, just didn't feel like I was on a road trip yet. We had an average lunch in Goldendale, WA, and continued on at a pretty swift pace. Hwy 97 is an easy road to go fast on; nice pavement with sweeping corners, perfect for our bikes.
As we passed through Yakima, we turned off on Yakima Canyon Rd. We knew this was a 30 mile detour that would connect back to our main road. What a treat that was! As we got off the freeway, a guy on a Goldwing asked if we were riding the canyon road. He asked us in a friendly, yet challenging way. He had his 9 year old son on the back. I've never seen a Goldwing corner like that!
We arrived at Lake Chelan around 5 only to find that every room in the town was booked. Looked like an awesome town, wish I woulda booked a room earlier. We continued on through tiny towns until we decided on Omak. It was small, yet bigger then the previous towns we'd travelled through. It had character though...a little curious, even a little creepy maybe, exactly the kinda town we were looking for. Got a room at a Roadway Inn, cheapest room of the trip. Then we went out and checked the Omak nightlife.
We hadn't taken any pics the whole day, guess we were in a hurry to get away from all that was familiar, and get the ride underway.
Day one: total miles 370

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Beautiful downtown Omak:

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Day 2
After wandering into some shady bars that were lucky to get out of we called it a night. We awoke early and had a suprisingly good hot breakfast in the lobby of the motel.
We were excited by the fact that we were only about 45 miles from the Canadian border. We made those miles quickly and were at the border before we knew it. We were individually questioned by a very cute border patrol guard. She looked at us suspisciouslly as we zoomed away, my Two Bros pipes blaring.
We entered the town of Osoyoos, which is in the fertile Okanogan Valley. I was told this is the wine country of Canada. He turned onto Hyy 3 and quickly began to climb above the valley. The view was amazing.

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Hwy 3 travels east-west but is a scenic route that meanders north up to 100 miles from the border then almost down to the border. The road and the scenery was awesome. We stopped at this little restaurant in Greenwood. The owner said they had the best burger in Canada; we had to try it. Now we didn't have any other burgers in Canada, but it was one of the best I've ever had ANYWHERE

We continued on, with our goal being the town of Nelson, on our way we had to stop several times to take in our surroundings.


Justin doing his part to keep Canada green.

We arrived in Nelson early, around 4. This would be the shortest leg of our trip. Nelson was a charming town with lots of artistic types. We stayed in a Best Western which ended up being the most expensive night of our trip. We found out later there were hostels everywhere. The only downside of our stay in Canada was the price of beer! 12 bucks for a six pack of domestic!
We had some good food and went to a blues bar and listened to some fantastic music. Clouds rolled in about 7 and it rained all night.
Day 2 total miles: 270
[ATTACH][/ATTACH]


More to come soon

[Ally House]

More, please.

[JimmieS]

Started reading this last night as you were posting it -- thought I'd wait till this morning to see if it was done -- Like Alley Said ..

More Please!

[Sbyllek]

[RosevilleRod]

"The Royal" pub in Nelson, pictured above, looks nearly identical to a pub called "Lord Nelson's bar and grill" in Calgary! Spent too many evenings there, ejoying both the comedy night and the music. Too old for stuff like that, but I did it anyway...

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Day 3:
Just as we had hoped, we awoke to mostly-sunny skys. The roads, and our bikes were a little wet but the weather looked promising. We had a good breakfast at the hotel and set off.
Our plan was to cross Kootenay Lake by ferry at a crossing about 40 miles up the road. Justin and I had been using cheap communicators that attach to walkie talkies up to this point, but Justin's had crapped out. As we left the hotel parking lot Justin took a right, but I didn't see which way he went... I took a left. Long story short, we lost each other, waited for eachother at different spots, but both finally met up at the ferry point. We realized that it's important to have a game plan in these situations. Luckily, we both knew where the next town was and how to get there.
As we were waiting for the ferry, two guys on sportbikes, offered to let us sneak in line with them. They turned out to be from Edmonton, Alberta and both had to work the next day. They had a long ride in front of them.


After the ferry, we headed south along Kootenay Lake, which seemed to go on forever. We rode with the two guys from the ferry for a good portion of the day. The road was twisty and well maintained but the large amount of pullouts made us weary of going too fast. Highway 3 jumped North one more time to Cranbrook, before we made our descent into Montana.
Getting back into the US was easier for us then getting into Canada. I thought they would've questioned our one day Canadian visit for sure, oh well. After the border crossing, we headed 70 miles to Kalispell. This was most definately deer country. We saw only two (live ones) this evening howeverThis is one of the two places I had reservations. With it's close proximity to Glacier, I thought we might have trouble. We pulled into the Econolodge around 7 and were happy to see lot's of other bikes in the parking lot. I'd booked two nights here, with an easy day of touring the park our only plan for the next day
Day 3 320 miles

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Day 4
As we were leaving to head to Glacier, we ran into a biker we had talked to the night before named Mike. He was packing up the same we were and had a pretty loose schedule so he decided to cruise along. I really liked Mike. He was from Northern California and was travelling alone on his V-Strom 1000. He was the kind of biker I'd like to be in 20 years.
Glacier was awesome; more awesome then any camera could ever capture. The scale of the peaks and valley's was unreal. The park has been well documented on this website so I won't go into details. One story I've got to tell, however:
We were riding down the east side of Logan Pass. Justin was leading, then me, then mike. All of the sudden, a large brown bear comes out of the trees to the left of Justin! Mike and I stop immediatly. The bear just stops and stares at us in the middle of the road. He was about 20 meters away. I didn't know whether I should reach for my camera or keep my hands where I could do a u-turn quickly if required. I did the latter, didn't get a picture. The bear stared at us for a couple more seconds then dissapeared into the woods towards the lake.
After talking to many other people in the park we determined it was probably an adolescent grizzly. Pretty cool.
The rest of our day was pretty uneventful in comparison. We rode around the south-east section of the park and looped back to Kalispell. If I was ever to ride the park again I would stay in East Glacier. It seemed like a charming little town that seemed very far from civilization.

The clearest water I've ever seen.


The three amigos








Day 4: 270 miles