Day Two: Hell's Canyon-Good Name For It

Up early (ok, ok, it was only early to me) to eat the hotel's free breakfast, we hit the road in cool temps and clear skies. Norman was eager to ride and once again had a Traveling Road Show performance in the parking lot of the hotel. It was about 64, but the sun was so bright and hot that we were comfortable in our mesh jackets.

Today's ride was very demanding in many ways. The ride to the Canyon Recreation Area is a National Scenic Byway and quite beautiful. We stopped not too far out of Baker City to snap some pics and admire the scenery. It was sort of wide open spaces out here.



The landscape reminded us of old Western movies.



Here are Normie and I enjoying the view while Ray takes the pictures. See how the road disappears?



This was a lovely, curvy road, hilly and very little traffic. After about another hour we stopped at a rest area near a nice stream. All this day, with the exception of our lunch spot, we encountered those Sorta-Potties...permanent buildings, but no plumbing. The scenery more than made up for the facilities. We all had a nice break and the bikes rested in the only shade to be found for miles around.





If you click on the next picture you can probably read the sign that warns of 35 mph squiggles ahead. They were not kidding.



There were squiggles ahead and squiggles behind and many more to come.



We stopped at the Hole In The Wall Slide Overlook.



I enjoyed the views, Norman chased grasshoppers and Ray again took pictures.



Here you can see the shrunken river and the old road.



We passed thru the little town of Halfway. Halfway to what, I don't know, but possibly halfway to no place. The town had 2 restaurant/watering holes. At one, all the bikes out front were v-twin cruisers and at the other, right across the street, all the bikes were sport bikes. Apparently segregation is live and well in Halfway. There is no gasoline in Halfway, so perhaps it's halfway to fuel. Not the way we went though. Soon we arrived at the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area. Notice the scale of the sign and the amount of squiggles it shows.



Let me tell you, this sign vastly under represents the amount of curves and gives no idea at all of the elevation changes. The rest of the day's ride was brutal to not so bad. It was warming more every minute, eventually reaching 87, which may not sound so bad to the rest of you, but for Seattle people, 87 is HOT. The average in that location for the day is 76, so you can see it was indeed HOT.

This sign also does not tell you that for most of the ride through the rec area and beyond, the road surface is awful, with a capital A. This was way worse than last year's Road From Heck and its bad surface. This road is where extra potholes are stored and grown until needed in some city. I think the forest service (or whomever) followed an existing game trail and simply gathered up all the loose rocks they could find (and that would be a lot of rocks) and then poured hot tar over the rocks. That many bumps, dips and potholes. Dodging potholes and bumps is not such an easy thing in a sidecar, but I did get plenty of practice standing up and steering so my rear didn't get pummelled. That's easy on a scooter with those nice floorboards. It is not so easy in a hairpin curve. There was not much traffic on this road either. Some few cars/trucks and fewer motorcyclists. I have decided that's because they knew something we didn't know. This road is suitable for motocross.

This was by far the hardest, most "technical" road we've ever tried. The curves ranged from 15-35 mph and were never ending. The builders of the road were not concerned with things like camber, that's for sure. Nor did they worry about the tightness of curves or the way the curves join together, nor the width of the road. The maintainers are not much worried about actual maintenance. In some places there was not much road on the road.

But oh, my, was it ever beautiful. Although, we got mooned.



At last we made it to the canyon overlook. The Snake River is so far down in that canyon that you can't see it. The landscape was vast.



Here's the view at the overlook, which we are going to try to stitch into a panorama one day soon.















Here's Norman enjoying some shade with my scoot. Shortly after this a large group of riders came in and it was another installment of The Traveling Road Show before we got back on the road.



We hoped that the road on the other side of the overlook would show an improvement of the surface, but alas! Potholes and bumps continued. The road continued to be extremely curvy and narrow, probably a piece of cake for Kneedragger TJ and his ilk, but very hard for us. I wish we had pictures of the actual road, but between the trees, the narrowness of the road and the lack of turn outs, we have no pics of the curves. I don't know if Ray can post a track for you that will show the extent of the curviness. I hope so. We think that perhaps this road is harder to ride and curvier than Tail of the Dragon, with holes and bumps thrown in. Not to mention the cows. This is also range land and the cows to not respect the right of motorcycles to be on the road. If cows want to cross, they cross. If the cows want to hang out in the middle of the road in the middle of a blind curve, they do. And black cows can be hard to see in the heavy shade. I bet there aren't cows hanging out on the Tail. It was a very interesting and surprising ride.

Eventually we came out of the recreation area and thought the road would improve. Not much for several miles. We caught up with some state highway which gave us a bit of nice sweepers and easy curves. It was nearly 2 pm, our bikes were running on fumes and Lo! and Behold! A town! I can't remember the name of the place, but in additon to being hot and dry and sunny, it had a gas station (where the old guys at the station got a large charge out of Norman in the sidecar) and a restaurant with a shady dining porch where we could sit down and eat and Norman could cool off on the concrete. What a treat to sit on something other than a motorcycle seat. I can't tell you the name of the restaurant, but it served up what Ray said was the best chili dog he'd ever had in his life. Knowing it was 2 and that we'd probably want supper at some point, I ordered a single taco and a big soda. That "taco" filled an oval plate. It was huge, more like a cold, lettucey burrito than a taco. There were tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese and seasoned ground beef in a large flour tortilla. Very tasty. We saved the place in the Garmin for future reference.

Back on the road, it appeared that we'd have sweeping curves and small hills for the remainder of the day. Ha. Along the easier portion of the afternoon we stopped at another overlook for more pics. I think this is Idaho, but it might be Oregon. Maybe Ray knows. Ray says Idaho.







There were more nice curves for a bit longer.



And then we started to climb. The road surface changed to new asphalt. It was wider than the Hell's Canyon road, but not much and was packed with tight curves again. There were small to no shoulders. No place to take pictures, which is really too bad. You know what goes up must come down, and so did the road. Tighly unraveling, down we went into a valley and soon arrived, hot and sweaty and totally worn out, at the Best Western in Clarkston, Washington. We unpacked, this time in a first floor room, and Ray went across the street to bring home supper in a bag from the local fast food. It was food but not memorable.

Norman sacked out in his dog bed the minute it hit the floor and slept hard all night. He was one exhausted dog. I don't know why, I was doing all the work. Perhaps it was the heat that wore him out. It was awfully hot for us and for a dog with thick fur, it might have been even worse. He looked pretty hot most of the day and seemed to enjoy the a/c as much as we did.

Supper, a quick clean up and some tv finished us off for the day. We took breaks whenever we could find a suitable place, having learned our lesson about hydration last year. Our gas mileage today was better, Ray and I needing fuel at the same time, although my mileage was still worse than Ray's.

The Hell's Canyon road was hard for both of us. Ray said he thinks maybe once is enough for him and he didn't care if we never rode that road again. But I think if perhaps someone comes out to ride with us, he might be convinced. The going was way slower than we'd thought it would be, the road surface way crappier than it needed to be and the day was longer than we thought it would be. While we were coming out of the rec area, a small group of Wingers started up the road. I said to Ray, how can those guys on those big Wings, double up like that and several of them way rotund, manage that road? I guess they didn't, because while we were starting our lunch, that group came back past the restaurant and turned on down the highway. I admit that as hard as it was and as tired as I was, that I felt rather proud that we'd negotiated that road at respectable speeds and without mishap, despite hairpins, blind decreasing radius turns, cows, and potholes. But I gotta tell ya, my shoulders and hands hurt at the end of the day.

Norman was always the first one to want to get back on the road. If he thought we were taking too long at a stop, he'd fuss at us. On occasion, he didn't want to get out of the 'car. I think that although he missed his daily power naps, that he loves the sidecar. He surely loves stopping for lunch.

All words by Susan, all photos by Ray, copyright 2009, all rights reserved