Ballard Pubs

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Nearly a year ago, I found myself with some sunny days and nowhere to be, so I embarked on my first multi-day motorcycle ride and was hooked. That ride (The Epic Unemployment Motorcycle Ride) is described in greater detail here.

I had MANY formatting problems, so it’s possible that pictures will move around. You should still get the gist of the experience though. Click on pictures to open up a larger version and see the detail, then click “back” in your browser to return to the text.

This ride was the next chance in an otherwise busy summer to combine motorcycling and sunny weather (relatively sunny…more on that later). So with no further ado, here is the detail for this year’s Epic Motorcycle Ride (EMR). First…the BIG map.  Here is the route, peppered with annoying little alpha tags (A, B, C,) that I couldn’t make go away. You get the picture (pun intended, HA!) though.

The full map! Click to see it all.

The trip by the numbers:

• Miles: 1818
• Countries: 2
• Provinces: 2
• States: 3
• Mountain passes: 6
• Mountain Ranges: 4
• Nights: 4
• Days: 5
• Bighorn sheet: 12
• Deer: 5
• Mountain goats, bear, caribou, elk: 0 (despite warning signs)
• Friendly Arkansan: 1

Day 1

340 miles. Seattle, WA – Spokane, WA.

WABC Day 1. Seattle, WA to Spokane, WA

Sunday August 30^th: It would be great to say that upon waking up Sunday morning, with plans to ride out that morning, I had packed and prepped the bike. Nope. Although the bike had been serviced and pronounced sound, I had not yet packed a single sock at 9AM on Sunday morning. Add that to the slight hangover from the lovely wedding I attended the night before and it was an uphill battle getting everything ready.

But in relatively short order, I had attached my lovely new motorcycle luggage to the backseat of my motorcycle, had assembled the various clothing choices I felt I would need, and was getting assembled. Dan and I started with breakfast at Table 219 on Capitol Hill. Outside, ready to head out, Dan snapped a “before” picture.

Ready to ride

In a long ago era, I drove my tiny Honda CRX across the United States 5 times before, followed I think, by nearly a year when I didn’t leave King County, WA; so tired was I of long distance driving. From that time I remember that day 1 of a long trip seemed to creep by minute by minute by minute to the point where two hours in it seems that the trip will be an eternity. Because I was ready for that, this actually turned out to be a pretty easy day.

For much of the day I rode familiar territory. Highway 2 from Everett heads over Stevens Pass into eastern Washington where some of my favorite riding is. By the time I was on the road, it was noon on a Sunday, but thankfully there was little traffic. The ride on Hwy 2 through the Cascade mountains is beautiful but on sunny days, or when there’s snow at the resort on the pass, traffic can be beastly. I had a smooth easy ride through a sunny day.

Leavenworth, WA is just over the pass and is a bizarre Austrian-esque “village” where even the McDonald’s is required to abide by the aggressively festive architectural requirements to support the alpine mountain village theme. But it obviously has paid off…while I puttered through town, there were tons of tourists in madras shorts and flip-flops buying big pretzels and sausages (I assume). I didn’t stop since I was just barely into the day.

From Leavenworth into the rolling hills east of the Cascade Mountains. If anything but hay is grown here, it’s well hidden. The hills themselves resembled young heads departing a military barbershop: nothing but fuzzy stubble, although all of it was blonde. For all its monotony, I love riding through this part of Washington and the ride was peaceful, sunny and beautiful.

Blonde buzzed hayfields, WA

Interesting phenomenon in eastern Washington. What, from a distance, I figured to be a small fire with a pillar of smoke going straight up into the cloudless sky, turned out to be a mini whirlwind drawing dust and dirt straight up into the air in a dusky column a couple of hundred feet high! These were particularly weird to me since there were no clouds from which this wind was coming! I’m used to seeing footage of tornados descending from threatening clouds, but these little whirlwinds, just seemed to come together all on their own. I saw several of them, including one that was actually tracking across a bare hill. It looked like a cute little tornado, spitting dust everywhere. Although if a Midwest tornado is a ravening tiger, these were just kittens gamboling across the hills. SO cute!

At one point in my relaxed ride through the hills a bee smacked directly into my face shield giving me a bit of a jump reminding me of why I wear a full face helmet. I remember the bee because just about that time I realized that Highway 2 over Stevens Pass in Washington was also US 2 and went from Washington all the way to Michigan, where it bumps into a Great Lake before picking back up again in NY State and terminating in Maine. This is only interesting because as a kid in Miami, I grew up near US 1 and remember hearing that our little road (US 1) went all the way to Maine and that there was a US 2 somewhere. To my childish brain, this was nearly beyond comprehension it was so wonderful and obviously I held that wonder in my head all this time so that when the bee bonked against my face shield it was like the exclamation point at the end of this new discovery. Overall the realization of this connection between my childhood in Miami and my adulthood in Seattle was definitely better than a bee in my helmet.

Other random pictures on today’s ride:

Banks Lake, WA. Beautiful! Who knew?

Steamboat rock. Downright monolithic.

Having gotten a late start, I rode until about 7 and stopped for dinner just west of Spokane at the Rusty Moose (no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reconcile those two words). At “The Moose”, Brooke the helpful server recommended a steak sandwich that was visually and gastronomically spectacular. I would travel back to Spokane just for this sandwich I think. Of course, it was big enough for a standard family of four, so I waddled back to the Cedar Village Motel

Cedar Village Motel in Spokane, WA. An adventure.

just west of Spokane and asked for something small and cheap to flop down in. Interestingly, she had apparently been waiting for someone to ask for exactly that, and handed me the key to about 75 square feet of cheesy polyester bedspread and spongy floor. But the sheets were clean, so I slept relatively well.

Day 2

331 miles. Spokane, WA – West Glacier, MT

Day 2: Spokane,WA to West Glacier, MT

Just as on the Epic Unemployment Motorcycle Ride, I was amazed on this ride at how easy it was to see a lot in a short period of time. In a car, this drive would have been monotonous and mind-numbing, but part of what I love about motorcycling is that the view is unencumbered by the roof of a car and I get to smell all sorts of amazing things coming through mountains and open plains. Pine featured prominently on this trip and today in particular.

But first: Good morning from the Cedar Village Motel!

Cedar Village Motel in Spokane, WA. An adventure.

Something about high desert riding soothes me. The fact that I’m a fair-weather rider probably has something to do with it, so riding in the high desert is usually warm and smells softly of pine. This added to a smooth road that’s only lightly traveled and I’m in heaven.

From Spokane, I continued on US 2 which merged with the hated interstate (I-90) for about 4 miles before letting me off again. I HATE riding on the interstate; it’s just not fun. After downtown Spokane, US 2 shoots directly north before crossing over into Idaho into Oldtown which was in full celebration of Paving Season by having portions of (apparently) every major road blocked off for re-paving. Paving Season was a consistent theme during my trek.

At Oldtown, US 2 follows the Pend Oreille (pronounced “pond-ə-ray”) River to Sandpoint. I stopped in sunny Sandpoint for some refreshment. I asked a random woman on the street where I should go for coffee and she immediately directed me to Starbucks. I asked about local places and after much consideration, she said (somewhat judgmentally) that if I wanted something funky, there was always The Loading Dock. Clearly, I wanted something funky (doesn’t everyone?) and scored a triple Americano (hel-LO!) and an amazing cinnamon role that tasted richly of butter. Nice break, back on the bike, and on to the first of several successful last-minute decisions. Veering off of US 2, I took state route 200 in search of hope. Hope, Idaho that is (snicker). There wasn’t much in Hope, ID (or even East Hope, next door) but I wasn’t about to name it Hope-less. It was more an empty Hope, or a sparse Hope. Either way, I didn’t stop.

State Route 200 (which actually crosses several states) was the best re-route I could have imagined. Pictures taken of the Pack River delta and later of Lake Pend Oreille don’t do them justice. But here are some pictures anyway.

Lake Pend Oreille (Pond-aray)

Pack River Delta

I took 200 all the way to Wild Horse Plains, Montana and, just as if it was choreographed, as I was coming into town I looked through some pine trees to my left and there was an Irish Setter-colored horse running along a path not far off the road, mane and tail flying in the wind. Maybe it was captive, maybe it was being chased by something (I looked), I don’t know…I’m choosing to believe that it was one of a massive herd of beautiful wild horses that thunder through the “downtown” area of Wild Horse Plains knocking over mailboxes and crapping on sidewalks. They’re bad, these horses. Reeeeal bad.

I didn’t ask the woman at the gas station about the wild horse (right there in Wild Horse Plains), but I wanted to reeeeal bad.

Somewhere between Wild Horse Plains and Flathead Lake the hills were green and brown with sun and shadows on them that made the world seem particularly fine in that moment. I was alone on the road, but there was a train coming the other way, so I made the one-handed-pulling-down motion that my brothers and I used to make on family road trips to coax truckers into blowing their air horns on the freeway.

Instead of the jarring air horn of an 18-wheeler resonating inside a Chevy station wagon, this wonderful baritone sound echoed from the train into the hills around me. I swear I looked around to see if there were a camera filming a car commercial because it seemed almost staged. The whole horn thing captured the beautiful relaxing day pretty well though.

One of my reasons for taking Route 200 was to come at Flathead Lake from the surrounding hills, which I had heard was a great way to see the lake. It was as beautiful as I had hoped and I stopped in one of the towns on the northwest corner of the lake to cool my feet down a little.

Flathead Lake, MT

Dangling feet in Flathead Lake. Aaaah.

North from Flathead Lake, I came into Kalispell wondering what to do next. I was, at that point, only about 45 minutes from Glacier National Park so I decided to have dinner in Kalispell. I forget the name of the restaurant, but they had a good salad and soup combo. It seemed like an upscale local version of a TGI Friday’s and the waitress provided great insight to my plan.

After dinner, I rode into West Glacier, MT (obviously best known for being the west-side entrance into Glacier National Park).

Quick side trip to Hungry Horse Dam (very high dam with a neat name), and hightailed it out after a quick picture because of looming clouds (cloud avoidance was a theme).

Hungry Horse Dam, MT

Stopped for the night at a motel a stone’s throw from the park and took a brief hike along the Flathead River which is the park boundary.

Sunset on Flathead River. GNP west border.

Because there was a little daylight left, I unloaded the bike and did a few miles into the park just to whet my appetite for Day 3!

347 miles. West Glacier, MT – Creston, BC

Glacier National Park, Alberta, British Columbia (whew!)

Boy, THIS was a full day. Glacier National Park (US), Waterton National Park (Canada), Alberta and some of British Columbia. Note that my mileage is right in the 330 – 350 range each day. I truly had no planned stop each day, just a vague idea of where I was going, but it turns out that my body is about done with riding after about 340 miles.

This morning I was determined to get into the park as early as possible. Up at 6, I puttered just into the entrance to the park to get some lake pictures and wait for the sun to come up so I didn’t miss anything.

McDonald Lake near west entrance to GNP

McDonald Lake sunrise

Although I only saw one actual glacier…

The only visible glacier (from the road)

…the scenery riding on the Road To The Sun was breathtaking. I was lucky enough to be riding during paving season! Yes, this was a lucky break for me because I imagine there are other travelers who don’t get to see the rare orange-vested road-workers resting on portable stop signs.  Many pictures from the Road to the Sun.

Random mountainMore mountains

Pointy mountain

Waiting for paving truck

Logan Pass is the top of the continental divide in Glacier National Park so we various travelers dutifully got out our cameras and wandered around taking photos. The animals in the park have no fear of humans and actually seem to expect a hand out, they’re so aggressively cute. One little chipmunk (read: rat) tagged along behind me as I walked around looking for things to take pictures of.

Proof I was there

My favorite picture of this island

No bears anywhere to be seen (except one deceased who I can’t talk about.  So sad), but a warning which is almost as good, right?

Grrr...

Who, me?

Leaving the park on the east side

This is all for Day 3A…Wordpress does NOT like large file pages, apparently.

Day 3b

Entering Canada!

So, I met a guy in the park from Arkansas while we were both waiting in line for coffee and he said that he had heard that Waterton National Park (the Canadian half of the mountain range) was even more beautiful than Glacier! Canada? Known for natural beauty? No! (I didn’t say it; I only thought it).

I'm here!

So I headed out of Glacier to the east side of the Rockies and trekked north into Alberta and to Waterton National Park. Most of my east-ward (and down-ward) trek from Logan Pass was characterized by a fear of running out of gas. I didn’t fill up in West Glacier and was near fumes when I pulled into a station on the other side. Or so I thought…more to come in petroleum excitement tomorrow!

Much of my time in Canada was spent estimating the conversion from miles-per-hour to kilometers-per-hour. My car has both on the speedometer, but the bike just has MPH. My general rule was:

• 100 kph = 65 – 70 mph
• 80 kph = 55 – 60 mph
• 50 kph = 40 mph
• 20 kph = brisk walk

This is only important because in Waterton National Park, the speed limit was 15 kph which barely allowed me to keep the motorcycle upright. Additionally, it was toasty enough that I tried to keep my face shield open puttering through Waterton, but every time I opened the shield several bugs would apparently flee the direct sunlight and buzz around in my helmet. If I closed the shield, the bugs and I got too hot. Still…some Waterton pics seem in order.

Approaching Waterton National Park (Canada)

Waterton NP approach

Waterton National Park

So for all these compelling reasons, beautiful or not, I only spent about an hour puttering around Waterton and didn’t penetrate very deeply into the park despite paying $7 (US) to get in the gate. Instead, I headed north to intersect with Canadian Route #3 which was my primary route east…so this was the moment when I turned toward home.

Alberta was characterized by green rolling hills and green rolling hills and green rolling hills and zzzzzzzzzzz….but thankfully the boredom of a deserted arrow-straight highway through green rolling hills was broken up by enormous windmills dotting the landscape, their big pointy propellers turning and turning and turning and zzzzzzzzzz.

So from Canada Route #6 I turned left (at what I think was just a 4-way stop) onto Canada Route #3. Is it just me, or are our neighbors to the north less complicated about their highway naming conventions? In my time in Canada, I was on #3, #4 and #6 (I could have been on #5 if I had gone north into Calgary). For side trips, it was often #3A or#3B. Seems much simpler to me.

Left on #3 I was officially on the Crowsnest Highway which had its own lovely crow-themed signs for the whole time I was on it. I wanted to love Alberta through that area, but the little slice of that province through which I traveled seemed mostly focused on its proximity to mountains in British Columbia. So I continued on straight boring roads, feeling more like an Alberta commuter than a tourist which was fun and interesting for about 15 minutes (what kind of commuter was I? Insurance salesman? Auto parts rep? Organ transporter?).

Heading toward Crowsnest Pass (more a state of mind than an actual pass), it occurred to me that I hadn’t even made a purchase in Alberta and since I was appreciative of their smooth pavement, I felt I should somehow contribute to the economy. So I tried to buy a hotdog from a vendor near a lake on #3, but he wasn’t willing to take US dollars and I hadn’t planned ahead enough to bring any Canadian cash. So my apologies to the taxpayers of Alberta and thanks for their generous lend of some smooth (albeit boring-ish) highway.

One of the neatest things in Alberta was the Burmis Tree…both the description of it and the tree itself.

Burmis Tree story

The actual tree!

Of course, missing the actual Crowsnest Pass could have been impacted by the fact that I was aware for the last several miles in Alberta and the first several in BC that there were storm clouds ahead of me. For some reason, I was aware that I was coming into rain, but didn’t stop to put on my raingear until the drops actually starting falling on me.

*note to self: if rain is imminent, it’s OK to put on raingear BEFORE you get soaked.*

Although I know the bike is safe to ride in the rain, I hate riding in the rain and hate riding on wet roads. So I was a little tense for awhile through the mountains just inside British Columbia while I rode through some rain (not much really, I’m a big weeny where rain is concerned) and over some wet pavement.

All that passed without incident but when I looked down at my gas gauge I was WAY low on gas! So I had a lovely adrenalin rush over many kilometers (look how quickly I adapt) in BC, in a light rain, because I thought I was going to run out of gas. I made it to Cranbrook, BC which, due to being somewhat industrial and it being somewhat gray and rain, wasn’t really an attractive place but since there were gas stations I was quite thrilled to be there.

I stopped in the Harley dealership in Cranbrook, mostly just to stretch my legs but also (I can admit) to get the “he’s hardcore” nod of approval from the various folks in the Harley shop when I told them where I had come from and where I was going. They were sufficiently appreciative of my ride, so there wasn’t much need to stay long.

At this point, the rain had stopped, raingear was stowed back in the saddlebag, I had gas in the tank and the road through the mountains was dry; so I had a great ride from Cranbrook to Creston, BC which was my target stopping point that night.

In keeping with my goal to avoid chain-hotels, I stayed in the Creston Hotel and Liquor Store. Not nearly as bad as it sounded, but it cracked me up to get in line behind folks buying booze in order to register for my room.

Creston looked like it had seen better days and looked also like better days were coming due to the “revitalization” of the downtown where I was staying (revitalization = construction everywhere). Good walk in the afternoon sun, dinner at a café (and two local beers “You’ve never heard of Kokanee Beer? It’s from right here!”).

Goodnight Creston. I’m ahead of my (admittedly loose) schedule, so I have big plans for Day 4!

Day 4

344 miles. Creston, BC – Colville, WA

Creston, BC to Colville, WA along the Selkirk Loop

This map is confusing, so I tried to add arrows indicating my “S” shaped route around the Selkirk Loop. Probably it’s just more confusing? Anyway…good morning from the Creston Hotel & Liquor Store!

Creston Hotel & Liquor Store

The truth is that I really hadn’t planned for much of anything after Glacier National Park, so I was winging it at every step at this point in the trip. In Creston, I was on the east side of the International Selkirk Loop which is a series of roads that loop around the Selkirk Mountain range and go through British Columbia, Idaho and Washington. The whole loop was 287 miles and so seemed (based on my mileage average per day so far) completely do-able.

The International Selkirk Loop

So from Creston, I headed north on #3A toward the Kootenay Lake ferry. The friendly Destination Highway (LINK) folks say that the road from Creston to Nelson is the best motorcycling road in BC and I have to agree that it was great. Good pavement, lost of twisties and because it was mid-week, there was essentially no traffic either. To my left for most of the ride was Lake Kootenay which was a stunning blue-water lake with craggy mountains surrounding it. (yawn…breathtaking alpine views…whatever)

On the road to the ferry

The Kootenay Lake Ferry is (they say) the longest free ferry ride in North America, so again I’m indebted to the taxpayers in Canada for part of this delightful trip. Although I did actually spend money in British Columbia, so I don’t feel as indebted to those nice folks as I did to the folks in Alberta (except the hotdog cart guy who wouldn’t take my US money. Doesn’t he know who we ARE?).

On the ferry dock

the ferry dock

Nice lady on the ferry, who was passenger on a motorcycle chatted with me a little (her rider didn’t say a word to me…maybe doesn’t like Americans, maybe doesn’t like Harleys). Upon hearing my planned route, she tsked tsked me and recommended that I take two days for the Selkirk Loop and “stop and enjoy it more!”

It took me nearly another hour of riding to realize what my response to her was (she was gone): I like the scenery, but I like it way more from the back of the motorcycle than if I was going for a walk in the woods or sitting by a lake. Those things are nice, but when traveling on the bike I mostly like to ride nice roads and see beautiful scenery. If you see a nice lady in British Columbia on the back of a Suzuki Intruder being ridden by a non-chatty guy…tell her that for me, will you?

(see pictures at the bottom…I’m tired of wrestling with this website. It wants them at the bottom apparently)

From the ferry into Nelson, BC. Nice town, obviously targeted toward attracting tourists (not a bad thing). I stopped at a mall (anchor store was WalMart. Really?) to find an ATM so I could get some Canadian cash and participate fully. Another nice lady in the parking lot directed me to an ATM; memorable because when I thanked her she said “Of course! It’s important that you have money while you’re visiting Nelson!”. She was so not kidding. Of the $60 CDN I took out, I think I spent $5. Oh well.

Through Nelson, then to Salmo, BC for lunch and planning. My energy was flagging, so at first I thought I might bail on the whole-Loop idea and head southwest toward Spokane to begin making my way home. But I had a double espresso milkshake at the Dragonfly Café in Salmo that was like Popeye getting a can of spinach! Instead of south on the Loop, I took off east over Kootenay Pass directly back toward Creston! This was a real highlight of the trip. The continued theme of deserted roadways continued and I zoomed up a great mountain pass on a sunny afternoon.

Most fun pass ride

Zooming down the pass, my time from Salmo to Creston was just about an hour…a great time investment. In Creston (still on my espresso shake buzz) I headed south toward Idaho.

So the Selkirk Loop turned out to be more of the Selkirk “S” by the time I was done. Through Idaho, around through some road I had already ridden on (US 2 near and past Sandpoint, ID). In the early afternoon, I passed the Priest River swimming area and joined some local families cooling off in the river. At first, my plan was just to wet my feet, but it felt too good.

Just the feet

Before the dip

So I put on shorts and soaked in the cool river water for about 15 – 20 minutes before getting back on. Passed from Idaho to Washington in Oldtown (as I had a few days earlier in the other direction) and then started north on the bottom of the Loop (the “S”). Espresso now wearing off, I determined that I would need to make a decision in Tiger, WA (if for no other reason that I liked the idea of decision-making in Tiger). Brave bunnies came out of the bushes toward me as I sat in the grass in Tiger and looked at the map. This was Wednesday afternoon. If I stayed north back into BC (27 miles away) I would get back to Salmo…have a great dinner at the Dragonfly Café and find a place to stay, then continue west on #3. This would have meant riding all day Thursday and getting home sometime on Friday.

Or I could head west on Hwy 20 from Tiger and plan to get home on Thursday.

The bunnies agreed. Head home. So I got on Hwy 20 and planned to stop in Colville; just a few miles down the road. The late afternoon ride through the high desert pine forest along Hwy 20 was one of the most beautiful parts of this ride, including a random waterfall at the side of the road.

Random roadside waterfall

I’ve decided that Washington has some of the best scenery of anywhere I’ve ever been. Included in this later afternoon ride, I passed Thompson Lake which seemed a perfect place to have a cabin. I may look into that once I figure out how far it actually is from Seattle.

Colville was uneventful. I stayed in the Colville Hotel (motel is a better descriptor) along with (apparently) firefighting crews that were there for a fire somewhere close (I never saw smoke and you know what they say about where there’s smoke). All that meant that the Colville Hotel, which was good-sized anyway, was quite a hopping place. Thinking now about the ride home, I got my maps and got a burger and fries down the road at the Acorn Pub before getting some sleep in preparation for…

Trusty steed on the ferry

From the ferry deck

Day 5

456 miles. Colville, WA – Seattle, WA

Wandering from Colville to Seattle

Note the mileage? Yeah, more than 100 miles more than my typical day so far, this day exhausted me. You’ll also note from the map that I apparently wandered all over Washinton, which is true. But I had it in my head that since I was back in Washington, I was back home, right? Yeah, right. Interesting mileage trivia, I crossed over 10,000 miles on the bike! I was at Ft. Spokane in Washington.

Crossing 10,000 miles

Otherwise, I don’t have many pictures from today. The day was characterized by weather avoidance (only partially successful). Heading out of Colville in the morning, I saw dark clouds to the west and based on my note-to-self about imminent rain, I decided to take evasive action. Looking quickly at my handy-dandy iPhone to check the weather radar, I thought I could avoid the rain if I headed south.

The thunderstorms lined up like a game of Red Rover and started coming toward me. I feinted right, then dashed to the left at the last minute. As I sped south on Hwy 25, I could tell the line of storms was trying to get me, but I was too quick. The last storm in the line got me wet for about 5 minutes before I emerged in blue sky with a few fluffy white clouds. Take THAT weather!

But the last laugh wasn’t mine. Although I avoided rain, I rode through the worst wind I’ve EVER ridden in. Dan checked and I think it said there were up to 50mph gusts that day. What I know is that I have heard about keeping the motorcycle on a lean just to be able to ride straight, but had never done it before today! Side winds and head winds for hour after hour. For three days after, my neck was sore simply from keeping my head up in the wind.

Of course, since I had darted south to avoid storms, I was deep into the golden rolling hayfields that I had come through on my way out. Of course then, I thought I was SO far north! Here I was riding south for more than an hour just to get about even with Spokane (which is in northeast WA).

The best part was that somewhere in the midst of mile after mile after mile of crew-cut mown hay fields, I was all alone on a straight road (leaned over to keep straight in the wind) and an actual tumbleweed rolled across the road in front of me. It was so ridiculous that I laughed out loud. I have no idea what kind of bush it was before it was ripped up and tossed across the hay fields, but in its current incarnation it was about 3 ft in diameter, rolling and bouncing across the road with the wind. Here I am along the Columbia River…note the WAVES on the river! OK, it doesn’t look like that big a deal, but let me assure you…

Windy Columbia River

Riding and riding and riding…at one point the decision point was whether to continue straight west on US 2 as I had come out, or to head back north to Hwy 20 and cross the North Cascades Highway (which the friendly folks at Destination Highways have determined is the number 1 road for motorcycles in Washington).

I decided that I didn’t want wind and mown hay fields to be my last memory on this day, so headed north again. This was the decision that resulted in adding more than 100 miles to my day.

North Cascades Highway is as beautiful as I remembered. Although it became damned cold and somewhat damp at the top, I’m still glad I did it.

Diablo Lake. Green from glacier runoff.

Ross Lake on Hwy 20

Although that’s essentially the end of the ride description, I still had some miles ahead of me. I cut through some small communities in western WA before jumping on I-5 in Arlington and from there had about 2 hours of freeway to get home. Despite hating interstate traffic, at that point I was cold and somewhat wet and just wanted to finish the day.

I pulled into my garage at about 8PM and before the engine had stopped ticking (as it cooled), I was in a hot bath, warming up.

So that’s this year’s Epic Motorcycle Ride! I’ll probably engage the services of a Forensic Entomologist to track my progress based on the bugs lodged in the nooks and crannies of my motorcycle (and my helmet…thanks Waterton National Park). Laundry has been done and I’ll eventually get around to cleaning the bike.

I’m still hooked on multi-day rides, so can’t wait for next summer to see where I can go next.

Many months of carb-avoidant behavior have left me with few (OK, no) postings for a long time! I’ve trimmed down a tiny bit so am ready to post again. One of these days…

Greacious it’s been a month of Sundays since my last post to this blog! It’s not so much that we stopped visiting Ballard Pubs, but that our process ran away with us. We were in a groove…Friday night we would select the name of a pub out of the Big Glass Bowl of Destiny and just for good measure we would select a back-up pub if the first one was…well…lame.

Suddenly we were hitting 2 or 3 pubs everytime we went out and although fun, it was also exhausting! Plus having eleventy-hundred beers and getting up the next day to post on the blog didn’t seem to be working either.

So time passes, the world turns, and here we all are again. But this time, it’s about Portalis which – I have to admit – has received more of my dollars in recent months than any of the worthy pubs in Ballard have. Once again, I’m working to be low-carb and once again, I’ve shaved enough poundage off my frame to fit into the comfy jeans again; so beer is anathema right now.

Dan and I have been to Portalis many times. It’s a destination along with the many wonderful pubs in Ballard in that it’s easily at the end of the long downhill skateboard run from my house to Ballard. Going up requires (usually) use of the #15 which annoys Dan, but the trip down is always fun.

Portalis is comfortably dark-ish with a rustic feel to it. Coming in the door, there are wine racks for purchasing bottles to the left and the long bar for purchasing glasses (and bottles, I suppose) to the right. I love the bar; it’s made of some industrial-esque material, but it’s always cold as hell! Wear long sleeves if you plan (as i do) to rest your arms on the bar.

This night we met Dan’s pal Christine and her delightful sister Carol and sat at one of the tables. Truth be told, they had been there a few hours by the time I arrived. I believe that two bottles had been sacrificed to their experience so far. I was behind.

They just switched out their Pinot Noir by-the-glass on the menu…forever it had been Walnut City Wineworks (CA), and it’s switched to Bishop Creek Cellars (OR) which was so good I had two glasses. I would love to tell you that I’m a conn-a-sewer of wine and can break down the various nuances of these two wines but the truth is that they are both great. I’ll definitely have more the next time I’m there.

Since I hadn’t eaten in a few hours and was woozy after one glass, I also had a bowl of split-pea soup (very good) and a spinach salad (decent) which did the job of slowing the speed of the buzz.

There it is…not a pub, but a favorite haunt in Ballard.

It’s been a while since our last Ballard Pubs outing…I’ve been trying to be carb-free (or at least low carb) for a couple of weeks and it’s tough to be around great beer and have a water or diet soda pop, so I’ve been abstaining entirely.

But thankfully that’s all over (or at least somewhat normal-ish now) so we did a draw from the Bowl-o-Destiny on Friday! The Old Pequliar was the first draw, followed by King’s Hardware and Bad Alberts (both also in Ballard Proper) as backup bars just in case (of what you ask? I dunno…it’s like having spare batteries).  Although we drew three names, this time we knew better than to try to go to more than one pub. The last time we did a three-pub night, it was a little much. 

So just the Old Pequliar tonight and it was great! Not terribly crowded but a good buzz of conversation and unintelligible music in the background. Decent beer list…true to form, Dan and I had an IPA (Diamond Knot) and it was great. Although not easy to see when you first walk in the door, to the right in the back there are a couple of steps up to another room that has (I discovered) a pool table and two dart boards. Plus, the dart boards are the real bristle boards that make that ever-so-satisfying “thunk” when your dart hits home.  So good.

We didn’t play darts, but were pleased to find the opportunity for next time.

No food…although I’m allowing beer in my recent Quest For Health, I wasn’t quite ready to add a plate of fries (or similar delicacy). So all we could comment on was the beer and space (as if that isn’t enough).

The folks were what you would expect in Ballard and the surrounding countryside. Mostly white, with a smattering of folks of color. Not really an ironic pub (where you would say “pub” with air quotes), more of an actual pub. Worn wood surfaces, dark colors, efficient out-of-the-damned-way staff.  Overall a great night out, even with the lack of fried foods.  Looking forward to darts.