Earache

Shelter Cove's single restaurant. Seating for 10 - no waiting... Still more Hell's Canyon...

Hell's Canyon was a cool road. Zero traffic as well, Couple more pics....

Sucks more than anything has ever sucked. Actually, the ride back ain't all that bad as you want to get home. The ride out is worse as the anticipation just kills you. We only had about 2 days of temps over 55F, so we really froze our asses off this year. But if you goout much later in the summer, temps are all over 100F and you sweat to death. Just can't win sometimes.

I'll be in Chicago for a couple of nights next week. Will also be blowing through Cbus next week but probably won't stay over night. I' ll try to get over for a bike night sometime and maybe trailer a bike over with me.

That hotel is about 30 miles off of the main highway on a single lane, barely paved road. Sucks going back to the place each night on that fucked up road, so I can see why a lot of people rarely go there. Plus, there is only one restaurant in the little town and no gas station at all. On one night, the hotel owners made some homemade pizzas fo us for dinner - kicked ass. Won't get that at the Holiday Inn Express! Indy Ducati: Yup, I know Travis - good kid. I make some parts that they sell; ride height adjusters, etc.

My bud Joe did it all on an R1 - from CHicago. And it's his thrid tiome to do the trip. He did it on his 'Busa last year. The guys from Ireland shipped their bikes (an R1 anmd a Gixer 1000) to Washington DC and rode all over eastern USA before heading west. We met up with them in Salt Lake City. They shipped their bikes back to Ireland from San Francisco. Their trip was nearly 4 weeks long while ours was only two weeks. Allof the riders here are a bit older than most on Ohio Riders; Me(ST1100) - 48 Joe (R1)- 42 Dave (FZ-1)- 45 Mark (ireland, R1) - 40 Vincent (Ireland, Gixer 1K) 52 So if us old farts can do it, you younger guys should have no problems at all. This the 5th time I've done this trip, Dave's done it 3 times and so has Joe. We'll probably do it again next year!

No occassion; I do a two week long ride every summer and try to include a MotoGP or WSB race in it if I can. This year we chose Salt Lake as we'd never been there before on bikes. Some years we head to Europe for a couple of weeks of riding. The US Dollar ain't worth shit right now, so we'll be doing US tours for a the next year or two.

Ha! I posted up here and asked if anyone wanted to go along - didn't have any takers. Even tried to talk Satan into going. Next trips: July 8-15th we'll be in Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia farting around August 15-25th (tenative) we'll be riding to Colorado again. My wife will most likely wimp out and fly to Breckenridge, Colorado and meet me there. She hates the midwest ride (can't blame her).

We did make it back in one piece. Right at 7,000 miles for the whole trip. The last several days were spent riding in 40F temps with rain / sleet and hail in Wyoming and Idaho. Then it turned to plain ol' rain from Colorado to Illinois. We rodew through the rains that flooded Iowa. Don't wanna do that again anytime soon. So I get home, and what happens while I'm gone? 12" of water in my garage and workshop. Sucks! Plasma cutter, two welders, powdercoat gun and some tooling was all under water. I dried out the plasma and welder and I think they're okay. I haven't had the balls to plug them in to find out yet. Gonna let them dry for a few more weeks before I plug them in and burn the house down as they short out....

The bad part of the trip is now upon us - the 2,000 mile hump back home to the wastelands of Indiana. Hoping to make it on the tires that I have on the bike now. In the highly unlikely event I see something worth taking a pic of on the way outta here, I'lll post it. Might get lucky and get some tornado pictures or something of the storms that are raging all over the midwest right now. It's going to be pure joy riding in that crap. Couple pics of the plains as well roll out of the mountains and head east....

At the end of the canyon is a rather nice little dam that creates the lake. I'm no expert on dams, but isn't it a generally bad thing when they're leaking water through the middle?

Said to be the deepest canyon in the US - depper than the Grand Canyon (note: I'm gonna have to throw the bullshit flag on that one- I ain't buyin' it. Still, it's a deep asssed canyon!) The road into the canyon is around 30 miles long and it just gets narrower as you go in...

As we got closer to the end fo the Canyon, the roads grew tighter, steeper and more fun to ride. Again, we had the place to ourselves...

Moving right along, we ride over to Idaho for a look around. Lots of nice curvy roads -kinda getting used to that now - and one area with a name that called us. We had to go there. On the way up to Hell's Canyon....

Then we happened upon this handsome, suave and debonaire biker. I was the one taking all of the pictures so I only got 2-3 of myself. Dave took this one...

Stunning views of the pristine water... Good pic of Wizard Mountain, which is actually another small volcano that had risen after the major blast that took the top off the original volcano..

We crested a rise in the road and there it was, Crater Lake. Largest caldera lake in the US, six miles across and 2,000+ feet deep. Sealed system; no rivers in or out. The water is pooled rain and snow from over the years...

As we got higher in elevation, the trees disappeared, the temps dropped and the snow got deeper and deeper...

Our destination this day is Crater Lake, Oregon. I've been near it many times on other trips, but never went up to the actual Lake. Had to be done this time. The road up was, again, fantastic. A smooth surface and tree lined road at lower elevations... With loads of falls and rivers nestled in the trees...

My friend Dave gets a chicken kabob kind of thing for lunch. No veg of any kind, just a bunch of BBQ chicken on a stick. Looked much worse than the hotdogs on the rollers at Speedway...

Most of the roads in the area follow a canyon cut by a river, so the scenery is pretty good. Lots of lakes along the route as well...

The front tire on my ST is shot from the previous day's "spirited" ride;D so we're heading north to Medford, Oregon to get fresh rubber fitted. We're on Route 93 - another great NorCal road...

Back to our digs at Shelter Cove for another night after leaving Mark and Vinny to catch their flight. Our hotel on the cliffs above the Pacific. We were the only guests and had the place to ourselves... Views from our rooms....

Okay, enough of the trees. mark and Vinny have to head for San Francisco to load their bikes for shipment and catch a flight back home. We head down Route 101 and 1 on the way to Mendocino. Excellent roads that follow the coast and dip in and out of the woods...

The next day we're off to find the Redwoods - oldest living trees in the US with some being nearly 1,000 years old. Big bastards, too! Mark standing on top of a fallen Redwood...