Motorcycle Road Trip – Day 1: North Vancouver – Winthrop – Grand Coulee

8

On a bit of a whim, since our boat lost our confidence vote earlier this summer, we decided to jump on the motorcycles and head south. We weren’t 100% sure we were going until Wednesday when we touched base with our neighbour to see if she could look after the pets since she had just returned from her own holidays. When we received a positive response, we decided to go. We didn’t even have hotels booked until the afternoon before we left, and that was going to dictate where we went. In the end we couldn’t find a room in the town we intended to stop at, at least not one less than $300 per night, so we looked a little farther afield, worked out the distances, and came up with a rough plan of attack.

We both visited the chiropractor on Thursday afternoon to try and get our backs as ready as they could be, and I pre-booked a recovery visit for when we get back. We packed our bags Friday night and Kirk checked the oil, tires, and chains to make sure we were in safe shape to head out for a few days. Early Saturday morning we threw the bags on the motorcycles and headed for Abbotsford where we crossed over into Sumas. We knew the border crossings would be crazy, and figured that Sumas, with its new Nexus lane, would both be the best option, and put us closer to where we wanted to be. The sign on the highway said a 30 minute wait as of 7:45am. They lied! The problem with the Sumas crossing is that there is only one lane leading down the bulk of the road to the crossing. So it was impossible to GET to the Nexus lane. We sat in the line of cars for a bit, and eventually another rider went by on the shoulder. We waited for a few moments, thought about the length of time this was going to take, and then followed suit, picking up three more riders, falling in behind us from the main line, as we went. Even with shaving what probably amounted to at least an hour off the wait, we had to inch along for a half hour before we could cut across the traffic and get to the Nexus line. When we came around the corner the guard managing the Nexus booth was out chatting with another person and seemed surprised to be confronted with someone to pass through.

From Sumas there we headed out on Mt. Baker Highway and took the turn towards Acme. This part of the road is familiar to me, I’ve ridden it lots. I love to come down here on my days off and ride the region around Mt. Baker. It’s usually quiet, the people are courteous of riders (more so than in Vancouver), and the scenery is lovely. But it was chilly in the forests and by the time we rolled into Sedro-Wooley my teeth were chattering. Knowing that we were heading into higher elevations and more thickly forested regions, we pulled on an extra layer, filled the tanks, bought a few power bars, and headed onto the North Cascade Highway.

Traffic was light, the weather was fabulous, but pretty chilly thru the mountains, even with the added layer. The scenery was incredible and we stopped a number of times to drink in the views. And wow, were there ever a lot of speed traps on the road in the first 20 miles or so! We pulled off to take some photos at a viewpoint above Gorge Dam on the Skagit River, and a driver stopped to chat with us. He said “I guess you aren’t going to manage to go 100 since there are 100 police on this stretch of road today!” Lots of people received tickets today.

From there we carried on and the road dove down into the valley below and across a bridge before curving sharply and gaining elevation above the lakes formed by a series of dams. A pullout offered a panoramic view of Diablo Lake below and there were many people drinking in the million dollar view.

The highway is only usually open between April/May and November. In 2011 it didn’t open until May 25th, and it has closed as early as mid-October. The snow gets too deep for clearing, and as you ride the highway you can see why, in most areas there is simply nowhere to put it all! After the big hairpin, it was all downhill into the valley below, and as we dropped in altitude, we gained in temperature.

Just outside of Winthrop we had to stop and strip some layers off, it was getting too hot to have anything but shorts and a t-shirt under the leathers. We had been grateful for the insulation they offered earlier in the day, but knew we’d be sweating by afternoon.

Winthrop was a surprise. An old western town with some interesting shops. We took the first spot we could find to park, and planted ourselves at the table right in front of our bikes to have a sandwich and rehydrate. A short walk around town revealed many interesting shops filled with unique wares, pottery, jewellery, clothes, fishing tackle, and anything else you could think of. It was hot, and although the smell of fresh waffle cones made an ice cream and enticing prospect, we stuck to water.

Out of Winthrop we refueled and then headed on down the highway in an eastern direction. At a junction we were unsure of directions. The road signage tends to provide the distances and directions to the major locations, but not to the ones in between until you are almost on top of them. That complicated things since we had planned our route by little town to little town and those weren’t always apparently clear with respect to direction. Not surprisingly we were pointed the wrong way, so we turned around and doubled back down the hill. Too bad, that road looked really promising! As we came back down to the junction, a suicidal quail played chicken with me on the road, but he survived. To this point this was about the only wildlife we’d seen that wasn’t dead. Lots of deer, mostly roadkill or in the back of a pickup truck, but none alive.

We passed through a small community called Twisp, which I loved for no other reason than I just loved the way it rolled off my tongue – “Twisp!”. How can you not love that? The name means wasp, or yellowjacket in First Nations.

The landscape had given way from forests to dry foothills covered in sagebrush as we rode past Winthrop and along the valley floor until we turned north towards Pateros. From there we passed through Brewster and across the Columbia River as the landscape metamorphosed into mile after mile of apple orchard. Clouds of birds erupted from the fields as we passed and eventually we rode into Bridgeport. Back in 1910 Bridgeport was home to the largest hotel between Seattle and Spokane, a testament to the days following the Columbia Gold Rush when the Chief Joseph Dam was under construction. It was an impressive dam, definitely the most impressive in the collection we had seen so far, but we knew the one that lay ahead of us would be more so.

We stopped in the shade of a tree, just as we were leaving Bridgeport, and quenched our thirst again. This was hot country. We continued on Highway 17 as it veered away from the river and then headed further east across a desert-scape of sagebrush and strange isolated mountainous rocks left behind by glaciers millennia ago – glacial erratics (non-native rocks and boulders deposited on the landscape by glacial activity). So much evidence of the ice age and the massive floods that followed it – scouring the land. It was eerie, like some strange moonscape. There wasn’t a tree to be seen anywhere, and the heat rose steadily, we were virtually alone on the road, we saw only a handful of vehicles in the 40 miles of nothingness. And it was dry, dry, dry. This would be a lonely and unpleasant place to break down.

We stopped along the road to take a few photos of the desolation and strange and lonely rocks, there were strong winds that had been sucking and blowing us around on the road and as I had the camera to my eye, Kirk said “That was weird” – the wind literally just stopped dead. It left one with a strange sensation, as if something unusual was about to occur. As we got underway again, the winds picked up and resumed knocking us around on the empty road, while our heads continued to swivel around at the vacant and eerie landscape. This is scrubland, its only useful function is range out this far from any homes. There was the odd puddle of water, but most of them were dried up salty smears on the landscape. With nothing in sight, it was disconcerting and I couldn’t help wondering if we were even on the right road. But then we could see massive power lines in the distance indicating a large power source was close by – only one thing big enough for that around here – the Grand Coulee dam had to lie ahead. As we came closer to the power lines, the odd home materialized out of the heat haze, and some livestock could be seen behind the fences lining the highway. A wheat field rose out of the scrub, and the road dipped between a blasted out rock wall.

Then suddenly the road gently curved and dropped below the flats and we started to sink into a canyon. It felt strange to have to lean and turn again. We saw a sign for a viewpoint over the Grand Coulee and pulled off to take a look. Impressive. The construction of the Grand Coulee dam began in 1933 and it was completed in 1942. It is the largest electricity producing project in North America, and was the largest concrete structure in the world until the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze was completed in 2009. From our high viewpoint we could see across the top of the gorge and down across both sides of the dam below. I couldn’t help wondering why building a town below a dam that size seemed like a good idea, but it’s survived 80+ years already. This late in the year, the waters aren’t raging and the spillways weren’t running. There was only a small amount of water being released through the lower openings.

We stopped a few more times down the hill to stare a the massive structure, before finding our wonderful little Inn right across from the tourist centre. We backtracked up the hill to Pepper Jacks for a disappointing dinner (the steak was fine, but I could have done without the microwaved frozen mixed veggies and the reconstituted potatoes with a blob of canned gravy that was of greater volume than the potatoes they were enveloping). But the beer was good. If I’d been smart I’d have swapped out my visor since I could have guessed that it would be dark on the ride back down, but no, I forgot. So after dinner we stopped at a grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine, and then headed back down. I left my visor up thinking it would be fine, and immediately took a bug in the face. That wasn’t pleasant, fine, darker it is then!

Back at the Inn we finally got the gear off and stretched our toes, cleaned up, had a glass of wine, and wandered over to visitor’s centre where we fond ourselves a seat on the wall overlooking the dam and waited for 8:30pm to arrive. Then the parking lot lights went out, and a woman’s voice came over the loudspeakers and announced that the laser light show would begin shortly. Then there was a rushing sound and water started pouring down from the upper spillways, they turned the water on for the light show! Cool! The light show wasn’t at all what we expected. It is beamed onto the face of the dam and the water spilling over it, and is accompanied by a both narrative and music. The lights beam moving images – people, animals, rushing water – that depict the history of the region, the river, and the people and animals that have have used it over the centuries. The narration was educational and the show was very good.

After it ended, we wandered back across the road and fell into the hot tub to ease our aching muscles. After that and a glass of wine, exhaustion set in and we both fell unconscious for the night.

Roughly 520km today