Motoblag

Day one

My friend with the BMW F800ST seen here has upgraded and joined the Honda flock.

It’s a 25th anniversary Honda VFR with the tri-color patriot paint job. It looks hot.

The wife is ready to roll with her new Shoei lid:

We take the usual route of Spiral Highway, Asotin Grade and Rattlesnake followed by Buford Grade.

Sigtrap must have rewatched Steve Zissou, for he pointed a lot this trip:

The viewpoint in Hell’s Canyon National Recreational Area was nice:

Yes, we know where the canyon is, sigtrap.

Caught a large bird of prey in flight:

We bunked for the night in a hotel in Baker City, OR. Don’t go there.

Day two

When giving the bikes the morning look-over, the VFR has some wear marks on the tank so we go to find some blue painter’s tape to temporarily rig up a tank protector. As sigtrap was buying the tape, the wife and I stayed outside the Ace Hardware and entertained ourselves.

Where is the paint wear?

Fixed!

The 599 couldn’t go without some extra speed tape:

A lookout point near John Day Fossil Beds National Monument has parking for us!

Spectacular views awaited us on the top of the lookout:

A few miles down the road we find a rider pulled off in a bad spot, so we investigated. The guy hit gravel around the corner and went down and the bike wouldn’t start. He hitched a ride in to town to get a tow back home.

The wife took a picture of a road sign for her town, Kimberly:

We stopped at a visitor’s center for the Fossil Bed monument and learned an awful lot. Great scenery at the parking lot:

The different strata of rocks were colored:

Check here for a large version. Notice the pink and green sections.

Continuing on we came across a new wildfire:

A helicopter was dipping a bucket into the stream running next to the road and dumping it on the fire:

It didn’t help much.

Where is the fire?

All of day two had some of the best roads on which I have had the pleasure to ride. 25 MPH corners, switchbacks, 15 MPH corners, perfect pavement, almost zero traffic and nary a LEO in sight. I really think eastern Oregon set a new benchmark in great roads in my book.

We ended our day in Pendelton, OR with pizza and beer.

Day three

The last day entailed us hauling tail 150 miles back home. Nothing new for us nor anything really photo-worthy. Of course, it rained on us for 50 of those miles.