Are you tired of reading about motorcyling yet? Found time to sort through the rest of the photos this evening. Thought I’d do a quick travelogue to go along with. Jim and I met up at 7:30am Saturday morning. There’s a gas station about 50 miles north of my house that we normally meet at if we’re riding a northerly route. Our timing was great, we each pulled up to the light to turn into the station from opposite directions at the same exact moment. A good omen! We always top off our tanks together so we’re in sync for refueling stops later, then we headed to Arlington, WA for breakfast.

Jim had done a little research and figured out a back roads route to get us further north to Highway 20. This is the North Cascades Highway and it cuts through the mountains east to west. It’s one of the most scenic roads in the state of Washington and a real highlight of our trip. Or rather, it would have been if it hadn’t been gray and rainy all day. Fortunately you can enjoy yourself even in the rain. On the way, we met another rider named Ken heading our way at a rest stop. We decided to team up and ride together for a while, although Ken was planning to head back to Seattle later in the day.

Our goal was to ride to Winthrop, WA on Saturday and spend the night there. Really you can do this whole ride in a single day but we wanted to make more of an event of it. We got into Winthrop fairly early in the day, only to discover that most of the area motels were fully booked. We finally found a room at The Virginian about a mile outside of town. We planned to head into town, have dinner and maybe a few drinks. That meant parking the bikes for the night and hiking into town. Fortunately the rain was light heading in and had stopped by the time we headed back to our room for the night.

Winthrop is an “old west” themed town and a big tourist destination. Especially for motorcyclists riding across Highway 20. Motorcycles everywhere in town, even on a wet day like Saturday. We wound up having dinner at The Palace. The food was excellent and they serve a mean Long Island ice tea. We walked around town for a bit and decided to have dessert at the saloon, Three-Fingered Jacks. I had a slice of cherry cheesecake pie and washed it down with a rum and coke. MMMmmm. Then we hiked back to our room.

Sunday started out looking pretty nice, with just a little rain. We packed up and headed back into Winthrop on the bikes for breakfast at the Rocking Horse Bakery. Highly recommended, great food and great ambiance. Then it was time to head out. We hit highway 153 just a little ways further east and followed it south along the Columbia River. The scenery through here and along alternate highway 97 further along is stunning. We had plenty of blue skies and things warmed up dramatically.

Pretty soon we reached the southernmost portion of our trip and started back west along Highway 2. One of our favorite motorcyling roads is a loop between Leavenworth and Plain, WA called Old Chumstick Highway. Very twisty and generally lightly travelled. As we pulled into Plain, we could see dark clouds hovering over Stevens Pass and decided it was time to break out the rain gear before continuing on. As we prepared, we could see lighting strikes up in the mountains and hear the booming thunder. Not a good sign. Sure enough, not more than a mile or two further on we hit the heaviest rain I’ve ever ridden through. It was raining so hard that my gear starting leaking water almost instantly and at times, the only thing I could really see was the glow of Jim’s tail light up ahead in the murk.

The rain would stay with us all the way to the top of Stevens Pass. We pulled over there briefly so Jim could wipe down the inside of his visor. That gave us time to notice that in addition to the rain, thunder and lightening that it was also sleeting a bit. Nice! Fortunately once we crested the Pass and started down into the foothills the skies cleared up and the sun came out, warming us up and drying us out at the same time. The rest of our ride back home was pretty much uneventful.

You can see more photos from our trip at Flickr.