Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The Columbia River Inn parking lot when we retired last night had 2 motorcycles for every car. There was a big biker group sitting around, and in, the hot tub with a bucket of ice and half of a half gallon of Jim Beam ... which led us to skip the hot tub, but I digress. This morning as we prepared to leave, half the bikes were gone. The other half were probably sleeping it off. Around 9:00, we lit up the bikes with little concern about the noise 3 Ducatis make and how it might enhance a hangover headache. We had breakfast at The Melody and headed out.

The direct route to Winthrop is a meager 96 miles, and while interesting and pretty, it wasn’t going to be enough. Instead we chose a 178 mile route through Nespelem, West Fork, and on in to Republic. This was my number two candidate for best road of the trip. It was a mass of twisty curves, great pavement and engineering, terrific follow-the-river scenery, zero traffic and no speed-tax-collectors. It’s fun to let the bikes out, give them their head, and enjoy where they take you. We stopped for a walk about in Republic. Here’s one of the stores there ...

Now I don’t know about you, but this sure explains a lot about the tech support I’ve been getting lately!

And now as Paul Harvey would say ... “It’s time for the rest of the story.”

Republic is a neat little town. If I wanted to drop off the grid and live in a pleasant place, I could do worse than Republic.

Remember you can expand these ...

In the bottom right photo above, there is a “bird hotel” that looks exactly like the Hotel.

Moving on ... we cut across highway 20 through Wauconda, Tonasket, Riverside, Omak, Okanogan and Twisp. Another great road unencumbered by speed-tax-collectors. As we rolled into Winthrop, we hit the Memorial Day Monday traffic headed back to Seattle. Two miles of that at three miles per hour is brutal. But we found our way to the River Run Inn, checked in and set out to find lunch and a place to replace our electrolytes. Walk around, dinner at the Duck Brand ... and it’s a full day.

Too tired for Winthrop photos ... you’ll need to wait for tomorrow.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Motorcycles
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