We’ve been without phone service for the last 2 days. We use two different carriers so you know we were wayyy out there. We’ll try to upload what we can tonight, who knows what the situation tomorrow will be.
We’re spending the night in Ontario, Oregon. They have a Dq and both of us are stoked about the blizzard royale, or whatever ridiculous name it has. It’s the fancy blizzard with a terd of goodness at it’s center. We’re also doing laundry for the first time on the trip. We’re both thankful for that, you all are lucky the cameras don’t pick up smells.  🙂 It’s actually not that bad, we’re just running low on clean stuff.
The day started in the painted hills, which were awesome. Hopefully the 360 video shows it off. I also rode with it turned on, we haven’t had time to process the footage yet so I don’t know if it’ll be too shakey. Maybe we’ll put it up regardless of quality so that you guys can get an idea of how that sort of thing could work. It’ll be like you’re riding behind me.
It was another day of virtually no people. I loved it. The roads went from colorful canyons, to high forests, low scrub, and ended with farmland. We are at about 5000 ft in elevation. This coupled with the scrub land we rode through, my brain wouldn’t stop referencing Beastie Boys, High Plains drifter.  Drifter. See, still there.  We ate a lot of bugs today. They were everywhere. Another creature that was everywhere were these little squirrel like beasts. They had a death wish and would wait till right before we rode past them to either hide, or attempt suicide. Suicide squirrels is what we call them. No deaths today, but that wasn’t from lack of trying.
A great day. We wish you were here.

It was a phenomenal day. A day of almost all amazing motorcycle roads. In the 7 or so hours we rode today there were literally less than 10 cars in our lane. You can’t ask for better. We saw our first plateau and I killed my first tumble weed (yeah, on purpose). There were roads that were switch backs for miles. You know it’s good when that smile slowly starts to spread across your face and just stays there. The scenery was unbelievable.. this was all thanks to a treasure map.
Last night Swampkat and I went and had dinner at a place with one of the most questionable Yelp reviews I’ve seen. We considered taking our knives. I’m not kidding.  There must be a big difference in what happens in this bar at 6pm compared to 10, because we had a blast. I had the best French dip in 10+ years and Kat’s food was excellent. Well, right behind us, on the bottom shelf of a mostly empty bookcase was this note pad with large sheets of paper. It looked innocent enough and I was just looking for something to read. So I grabbed one. Listed on the front were the 7 wonders of Oregon. Interesting enough…but on the back was a map! On this map were Oregon’s scenic byways. It was like we discovered treasure. We immediately started scheming, there are days and days of roads available/recommended,  how much of this can we cram 😉 into these remaining 2 days?
Like I said, today was outstanding. Finding the map and talking to locals has always been an exciting dice roll we’ve both come to love about road trips.  We are both beat up after all the amazing, but grateful.
Internet will become more hit or miss from this point on. We will post when we can, but expect some delays. No 360 today, the roads are too good. See you guys later.

Long story short, the plan worked. We didn’t see a spec of rain!
The day started with tiny roads and small towns. There were so many flowers, it was unbelievable. Entire fields completely white, it looked almost like snow.  There were vineyards too. It was an interesting contrast to the wine country in California. In California the plants are green and everything else is typically dry. Not here, the fields were surrounded by green. It was beautiful. I haven’t ever seen a grape vine flower, but I did today.
After that we started gaining elevation. I think around 2500 feet, so not too high, but friggin cold. Holy moly cold. We were riding through the clouds and all of a sudden there was Mt Hood. It was only there for a second, but I’m glad we saw it.
The weather changed almost immediately after seeing the mountain and we followed a stream through a sweet valley. We took a little breaky poo and got some video for you guys.
The terrain changed again, the trees were smaller and the land pancaked. In front of us was this enormous valley running perpendicular to our path.  This was the Colombia River. This was one of my favorite parts of the day. We were going to ride next to the river for a bit and had a choice, the Oregon side was highway and the Washington side was 2 lane amazing. I think you know what we chose. To get to the Washington side we had to cross a bridge that had a toll. I’m used to bay area prices so when we found out it was 75 cents per bike we were blown away. The bridge was metal and the road was metal grate. It was amazing to see the river through the grates.
In Washington we followed a stream north then dipped back down into Oregon. The landscape opened up, there were no trees but instead windmills everywhere. We beat the thunderstorms and ended the day Condon. The motel we decided to stay at hasn’t had any guests in 2 days. Goodtimes.