Allan is on the road !

[oldjapanesebikes]

Well - after several days of having Allan (Suzsmokeyallan) living in my garage while he rebuilt/detailed/simonized and caressed his Buffalo , this morning he got everything packed up and hit the road for BC and Vancouver Island with H2Rick and a few others.

He has a new helmet-cam so you can expect to see a few videos once he gets back in a couple of weeks.

[Scorch]

Very cool, looking forward to the videos.

So...that's why Allan has been so quiet here lately

[H2RICK]

As Ian posted, Allan and I and four more of the "usual suspects" left Cowtown in the driving rain on the morning of Aug. 13th. Cold, wet, windy.....but that's the way the weather can be in an El Nino year.
The six of us persevered all the way to the Lake Louise gas stop where we finally glimpsed some sun. After an hour's break, we saddled up again and headed up Highway 93 (Icefields Parkway) for Jasper where our campsites were booked for the evening. This road has some incredible mountain scenery along it with a medium height pass to get to the Columbia Icefields area.....but we couldn't see anything because the rain returned the higher we got and at Peyto Lake at the top of the pass the temp was about +8*C (+45*F) which is darn cold when you're riding in the rain. Going down the north side of the pass allowed the temps to warm up some and, by the time we got to the Icefields interpretive centre and rest/gas stop, the temps had recovered to about +16*C (+60*F) and the sun was breaking through the clouds again. This was actually the end of the serious rain.....but no one was quite ready to shed his rain gear yet.
On to Jasper with the temps getting warmer and NO more rain so the pace picked up somewhat and we could also stop occasionally for photo ops here and there. We finally made it to our campsite (after the usual follies getting sorted out with the dragons at the campground gate) and found they'd given us 3 great sites all together.
Some guys were already there and set up and the missing guys showed up shortly so we were all back together again. Everyone's tent finally got set up so we proceeded to cook our meals over an open fire. Incidentally, this fire was built with 2 matches ONLY (no gasoline, no paper, no artificial aids) by Uncle H2 using his Boy Scout skills learned so many decades ago. Of course the guys kept asking me if I wanted any gas or some newspaper (they're such kidders) but, as on previous camping trips, I had a roaring blaze going in about 15-20 minutes.
During this fire-making episode a guy and gal pulled up on an ST1300 of recent vintage. They were from the US and were on a month long trip but had neglected to reserve a spot at this particular campground.....which was booked MONTHS in advance. The gate dragons suggested they ask if we would take these lost souls in because we were allowed to have one more bike with two riders on our three campsites. Those folks were sure happy that we were so hospitable towards them, they never having been in Canada before.
I'm not sure what they expected..........but we had a good yack with them later. They were NOT your typical ST1300 folks, I can tell you that. More like cruiser folks.....but maybe that's just my impression. Maybe Allan can fill in a few more blanks here.
After about an hour or so of gorging ourselves with various meats (cooked caveman style) and salads, we sat back to relax and digest a little. There's nothing like cooking over an open fire......and being in the mountains just makes it that little bit better, IMO.
A 3 hour long "bench racing" session ensued (along with a few ales and the odd cigar to help the stories along) during the remainder of a quite balmy evening. Off to bed and a nice quiet sleep....the last one Allan and I were to enjoy until we got to Vancouver.
The odyssey continues below.....

[H2RICK]

Saturday morning saw the early risers off to Jasper for breakfast while Allan and I packed up our stuff to get ready for the next leg of OUR trip. The four other guys were staying in Jasper for another night and were doing day rides around the area. Allan and I, however, had a different agenda.
We finally made it into Jasper for breakfast and gas. At the restaurant we talked to 2 gents who were from the San Francisco area, IIRC, on a couple of RENTED 1200GS Beemers. They were on a 3 month tour of North America, motelling it all the way!!! Who says the economy is bad ??
Allan and I said our goodbyes to the rest of the guys and headed off for Tete Jaune Cache where the road splits up......Highway 16 goes off northwesterly eventually ending up in Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast. Highway 5, however, heads south to Kamloops, our next destination. We stopped for the obligatory pics at the Mount Robson park sign with the big mountain goat. This is the only mountain goat we saw on the trip because they’re quite shy/reclusive animals and are seldom found near any highway.
The weather was glorious and we stopped along the way for shots of Mount Robson which is the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. On down Highway 5 which is the second boringest road in BC, IMO, although a lot of the scenery is quite nice. The road itself is a two laner which is totally unchallenging and just has to be ridden on to get anywhere interesting. A gas stop or two along the way and FINALLY we make it to Kamloops in the late afternoon with some decently hot temps (~+30*C or so). A bite to eat, a discussion about the evening’s stopping point, some more fuel and we’re off. I had been trying to convince Allan that he owed it to himself to ride the old Trans Canada Highway route down through Hell’s Canyon with its road tunnels and spectacular scenery and the actual Hell’s Gate site where the Fraser River roars through a very narrow gap way below the highway......so this is the way we headed, thus avoiding the Coquihalla Highway which, IMO, is definitely THE boringest road in all of BC.....although I have to admit I haven’t ridden ALL the roads in BC....yet.
We got into a government campground just west of Savona and got set up for the evening. Neither of us had quite digested our late afternoon meal and a total fire ban was in effect so cooking would have been out of the question anyway. Allan messed around with the Buffalo a bit and I cruised around the campground to scope things out. There were a LOT of locals from Kamloops (this was Saturday night, remember) with just a few transients like us....and NO other bikes. I did notice, however, that the Canadian National railway main line was about a half mile across the lake to the north of us and the Canadian Pacific railway main line was on our side of the lake about a half mile south of us.
Now trains are one of my fascinations in life, coming from a railway town like I do.....but after 11:00 in the evening TWO main line tracks within one mile are a little much, IMO......and the railways run on a 24 hour schedule, of course. I swear I heard every train on both lines that passed during the night.
To add insult to injury, a guy not very far from us had some CDs playing on his stereo that had to be the WORST bar band music ever made.....local bands from the sound of it doing “covers” of a whole bunch of groups. Fortunately campground rules forced him to shut down at 11:00 PM......just in time for the wind to die down so it became easier for the sounds of the 100 car freight trains to disturb my slumbers. This was pretty much the nadir of our camping/sleeping experiences for 9 days, IMO.

Sunday morning we rode west to Cache Creek and stopped for gas and breakfast. Cache Creek is a town that is pretty much dead because the Coquihalla Highway now gets all the through traffic to/from the coast because it’s MUCH faster than the older route.
In its heyday Cache Creek was a VERY busy place. It’s always smokin’ hot in the summer there and the many service stations did a land-office business repairing cars with boiled over rads and burnt out transmissions caused by towing trailers up the Hell’s Canyon road from the coast. Now the service stations are pretty much gone with only 2 left and the independent garages are all closed up. The whole place has the appearance of being on very hard times. Such is the price of “progress”.
We headed for Hell’s Canyon in the glorious late morning sunshine, wanting to get into the cooler Canyon itself before the heat really started to hit around 1 or 2 PM. We stopped along the way for photo ops and finally made it to the Hell’s Gate site for more pics and some cold water. We then continued along down the Canyon through 4 or 5 tunnels of varying length. The scenery is quite spectacular and the history of the canyon is quite interesting. The road CAN be challenging IF you pick up the pace somewhat. There’s not a lot of traffic (which is a good thing) but there are rock walls on the left and the river gorge on the right (which could both be bad things) so a certain amount of caution is necessary. One mistake could be your last.
We finally made it into Hope where the Coquihalla and Trans Canada Highways join together once more for the final hour and a half “race” into Vancouver.
Hope is where we discovered that Allan’s Buffalo had eaten its rectifier last year and also drained the battery so that at this point “she no go no mo”. We had to install a new battery and disconnect the headlight to allow the old girl to make it to Vancouver with only 2 phases of the alternator doing any charging.
This time, however, the Buffalo was running like a trouper, albeit a thirsty trouper (or maybe a thirsty trooper ) and nothing stopped us from heading toward the coast with the usual stream of Sunday traffic racing back into the various cities in the lower mainland of BC.
We successfully dodged all the crazy cage drivers in their RV’s/SUV’s and made it to Allan’s aunt Shirley’s place about 5:00PM. Aunt Shirley is everyone’s idea of a favourite aunt living in a very interesting older house filled with a lifetime of pics and other little knick-knacky treasures. She has two beautiful apple trees and a pear tree in her back yard. She’s quite a woman and her home is an oasis to two weary bike riders after all the heat and traffic. She certainly gets my vote as “Aunt Of The Decade” !!!
More in the next post.....

[H2RICK]

Monday morning and up for breakfast with Aunt Shirley and a few pics of the hacienda. Off through downtown Vancouver which was easier than anticipated due to rush hour being over by the time we got there. I took one wrong turn before getting straightened out and finally made it onto the Upper Levels Highway to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal that gets us to Vancouver Island. Met up with a guy riding a Ninja 250 waiting in line for the ferry. He’s been as far as Portland, OR on that tiddler!!! After about 45 minutes or so, the ferry pulls into the slip and we finally get loaded up and head off to the Nanaimo terminal on the Island. It’s a beautiful morning on the water and after a light lunch in one of the onboard restaurants (good food, reasonable prices), we spend the rest of the ~2 hour trip taking lotsa pics and just walking around the weather decks of the ship. We sailed on one of the older ferries so there weren’t quite as many vehicles/people as the newer larger vessels carry which was kind of nice.
Off the ferry at Nanaimo and we’re finally on the Island and headed to Long Beach. A quick stop at Cathedral Grove for some pics of some 800 year old Douglas firs and then back on the road to Port Alberni and points west. Finally some challenging road once we got west of Port Alberni.
The first part is high speed sweepers for 20 kilometres or so....and then the fun starts with the really twisty stuff for ~60 kilometres. Lotsa elevation changes along with twisty stuff. Allan really worked the Buffalo’s suspension to the limits on this part of the road and was wishing there was more....suspension, that is. We finally made it to the Pacific Rim National Park visitors’ centre, bought our park passes and roared off to the Green Point campground to see if, just maybe, they had a vacant spot. No such luck there so off to Tofino and some private campgrounds outside the park to check for vacant spots. As we rode towards Tofino, the road was socked in by banks of fog drifting in from the ocean which was only 1 kilometre or so to our left. There would be a clear stretch with sunshine for a couple of kilometres and then more fog. Repeat for about 30 kilometres. I’m thinking this is kind of unusual for August on this side of the Island but maybe it’s just a late afternoon phenomenon this particular year.
We found 2 campgrounds that had vacant spots but the prices were totally outrageous for what they were offering as campsites......soooo.....on to Tofino for a photo op at the end of the Trans Canada Highway. After this, we had to ride all the way back down the coast to the village of Ucluelet where there’s a community campground that usually has some spots for a reasonable price and....yessiree.....they had a nice spot big enough for 2 tents and 2 bikes. We had just nicely gotten set up and.....
everything went grey as the fog started to roll in. Ughhhhh.....Grrrr......
On the plus side, a neighbor pulls in riding ANOTHER ST1300 !!! This time it’s a guy from Quebec on a one month tour. It turns out he’s meeting his wife in Victoria for an Alaska cruise AFTER he spends time kayaking around Tofino and doing some whale watching. While we ate dinner together in the village, I filled our new neighbour in on the whole Long Beach area skinny. Then we wandered around together for a while through the village and finally called it a night. The fog got thicker and it started to drizzle a little. A crap ending to a nice day.
Bored yet ?? We're only 4 days into the ride, so far.....

[oldjapanesebikes]

Keep it coming - I'm reading it !!

[Scorch]

Subscribed!

[two-stroke-brit]

me too

[johnakay]

keep feeding us trolls uncle Rick

[H2RICK]

Tuesday morning and it’s STILL foggy and drizzly when we roll out for breakfast. This we have on board the “Canadian Princess”, a former coastal steamer used in these waters for many years to call with supplies and mail for small outport villages up and down the Island and the mainland as far north as Alaska. It's now moored and used as a floating restarant but it's still very nautical all in all. After breakfast, we wander around the village taking a few pics here and there. I figure that the weather isn’t going to let us onto Long Beach with any kind of a chance to enjoy the scenery so I might as well have a nap. After this, it’s almost time to eat again and then some BS’ing with our neighbour about roads we’ve ridden and things we’ve encountered or done while riding. Off to bed after our bench racing session and it’s STILL drizzling and foggy. The local foghorn is still moaning out its signal every 15 seconds or so. This day has been a total washout......Grrrrr.......except for a few interesting pics Allan and I have taken.
Wednesday morning and a little “research” yesterday has allowed us to find out that, strangely enough, there is only ONE really decent place to have breakfast in Ucluelet and that’s where we head after packing the bikes up. It’s called the Blue Room....but it’s painted some kind of weird beigey colour inside !!! It’s gotta be some kind of Left Coast artistic statement or something....??....!! Food is decent and the prices are okay so we’ve learned one more little piece of info about this area.
Our ST-riding neighbour had roared off earlier because he had to be in Victoria by Thursday because of hotel reservations and his wife’s arrival by plane from Montreal. The twisty section of the road on the way in had him very cautious about the ability of the ST (or maybe HIS ability aboard the ST ??) to navigate it safely in the rain and drizzle so he wanted to get an early start so he could go at a safe (for him) pace. Wise man, IMO, because he knows his (and the bike’s) limitations.
Allan wanted some pics of the lighthouse at the point of land on the south end of the village so we spend some time there taking pics. Pics taken and some rocks climbed, we saddle up and head for Port Alberni through the twisties. The further inland we get, the better the weather gets and by the time we’re halfway through the twisties the sun is peeking out more and more, soooo......Allan pours it on and motors off smartly. I’m still only half awake at this point so trying any tricky stuff to keep up with Allan is totally out of the question. Instead, I ride along thinking of how I can tackle each corner in an analytical fashion and the reduced speed allows me to fool around a bit. Aha.....a nice sweeping slightly downhill left-hander and then what looks like a nice bit of straight stuff. OK...up the pace a little and nail it out of the exit.....WTH ???.....construction ahead and......Yikes.....a speed trap!!!! On the brakes smoothly and.....Oh, oh.....they gotta have me....but did I slow down enough in time ??? The cop steps out on the road but he’s not looking at me !!! There’s some kind of tuner car that was just catching up to me as I exited the left hander and the cop got him cuz his speed was higher than mine. Saved by a tuner car !!! Is this a great country er whut !!??!!
Now I catch Allan who’s waiting in a lineup for the flag-person to wave us all through. On to Port Alberni after burning off the 5 or 6 vehicles ahead of us......one of which does some really strange stuff while Allan is trying to pass him. I’m hanging back watching all this and trying to figure the odds on Allan actually getting by the guy....but it all turns out okay thanks to Allan’s skills....but the Buffalo’s gas and injection oil took a severe beating while he was doing his thing. At our next stop Allan is fit to be tied by the antics of the goofball cager and goes on at length about idiot drivers, etc etc etc.
Our next stop happens to be the forest fire water bomber base just west of Port Alberni. Apparently this outfit has the last two operational Martin Mars seaplanes in the world. These suckers are HUGE.....and are living bits of history, being built during WWII and still flying today, almost SEVENTY YEARS later!!! We take some pics and walk around a bit and check out the little interpretive centre they have on the base. To actually tour the one plane that’s currently on station is quite expensive so we pass on that and head into Port Alberni.
Gas up and head out toward the Island Highway which is a newish north/south freeway that has supplanted the old/slow road along the east coast of the Island. We’re headed south on the freeway toward Victoria but it’s a ways away so we start looking for a place to camp for the night. There’s a government campground on the north side of Victoria and it turns out to be rudimentary but nice and quiet...just what I need. Back to the last town for a bite to eat, a little messing with/checking of the bikes and we call it a day. The campground is on an east-facing slope overlooking a bay but it is totally filled with these towering cedars and firs so the sun sets quite early. At least the temps are now bearable and there’s NO FOG OR DRIZZLE !!! What’s not to like ???!!!???

[H2RICK]

Up on Thursday morning to head for Victoria.....and get kind of caught in what passes for a rush hour in this sleepy provincial capital of this vast province. We find a suitable restaurant for breakfast and quiz the waitress about some directions we need. Allan wants to take some pics of the Empress Hotel, a local landmark for 100+ years or so. It turns out we are only 10 minutes or so away from the Empress so finding it is relatively easy. Pictures taken, we again ask for directions to the Swartz Bay ferry terminal so we can get back to the mainland. Allan and I are secure in our masculinity so are not afraid to ask for directions.
Off on the road to the ferry terminal and after 20 minutes or so there we are. It turns out that we are going to be sailing on one of the newest and largest of the ferries currently in service, the “Coastal Celebration”. This sucker is HUGE.....and packed to the gunwales with cars/trucks/bikes and people. The course from the terminal takes us between a bunch of small islands before we reach the open sea. On a nice day like today, the whole manoeuvering thing is quite easy.....but, for myself, I wouldn’t want to be sailing on a stormy day in January. I assume the captain knows what he’s doing but if the sea was running high it would be quite a job to get this rather large ship into and through the channels between the islands. Hopefully it’s something I’ll never have to endure.
In the event, it’s a lovely summer day with lots of interesting pics taken by Allan and me of our course through the islands and then out into the Strait of Georgia for the final run to the mainland.
The Strait is quite busy with marine traffic because the Roberts Bank Superport is located on the mainland at this end of the Strait. The Superport is where most of the bulk commodities for export get loaded onto ocean going bulk carriers.....mostly coal, potash and sulphur. We get some interesting pics of various ships and the Superport itself and finally dock at the Tsawassen terminal.
Off the ferry and onto the absolute maze of roads that the province of BC laughingly calls their highway system in this part of the province. The whole thing is a bad joke that is s-l-o-w-l-y being rationalized into something that can be understood by normal humans......but it’s a painful process. We pick up a tagalong rider who explains to us that, although he lives there, he’s not quite sure how to get to the Trans Canada Highway. He’s off on a jaunt.....but has to get on the right road first. He saw our Alberta plates and how the bikes were loaded and figured that WE would know how to get to the TCH !!! It turns out that my musty memories of this area were still valid and the recently added excellent signage directing us to the TCH allowed us to FINALLY work our way through the maze without any wrong turns. We end up at a gas station in Langley that we had stopped at on Sunday night in our way INTO Vancouver. Our tagalong pal thanks us profusely before he roars off on the TCH.
Onto the TCH for the ride to Hope, about an hour away. The sun had disappeared as soon as the ferry touched the mainland so it’s just intensive slogging along the freeway with very little of interest to see. We finally reach Hope, gas up and, leaving the TCH, head east on Highway 3 for Princeton, our next stop. One of the BIG benefits of #3 is that although it’s a two-laner, it’s quite wide and well thought out and has MINIMAL traffic which is just fine with both of us.
The Hope-Princeton Highway (as this portion of #3 is known) starts off with a very scenic but very steep uphill grade to the top of the first pass. We are now seeing the sun more and more and by the time we descend from the summit it has actually turned out to be a nice day.....but it IS cooling off because of the altitude and, for myself, I don’t relish spending the night in another rudimentary campground freezing my butt off with no suitable amenities close by......not even a restaurant. The total fire ban is still in effect in this area so cooking over an open fire is out of the question.
We press on to Princeton and see a sign for a private campground that looks like it’ll do the trick. We get gas and head for the campground which turns out to be very nice and which backs onto a small river. They won’t take plastic....but WILL take cheques!!! The age of miracles in not over yet. We find a suitable place to pitch our tents in the late afternoon sunshine and then realize that right across the river there is some kind of lumber mill or something with trucks constantly coming and going. Shades of the cement plant across from the Grand Forks campground LAST year !!! Oh well, we’re here now so we might as well enjoy it. We toss to see who gets to use the single shower first and.....heads works for me. This is my first shower since arriving at Aunt Shirley’s place last Sunday.....so is really appreciated by me......and others, too, I guess. Unfortunately there is no laundry facilities so my rather crusty jeans will have to wait another day or so before THEY can get washed, too.
After Allan’s shower, we go into Princeton for dinner which is okay and then back to the campground for a short session of sitting by the river, enjoying the rather balmy evening and watching the goings-on at the lumber place across the river. Off to bed and fortunately I was so tired that the truck traffic didn’t disturb my slumbers....or maybe they called it quits at 11:00 or something.
We are now officially into the homeward stretch of the trip as of today's ride.

[H2RICK]

Up on Friday morning to a brilliant sunshiny day. A little dew had fallen during the night so the tents needed a little drying off but we had a little breeze so that didn’t take too long. We stopped at the campground office to see if they knew of a good place for breakfast and, yes, they did. We rode into town down the main street of Princeton and there it was....a hole-in-the-wall kind of place run by two gals but it had great food at reasonable prices. After the meal, I spy an old Pontiac across the street at a body shop, so I wandered over to have a look. I was a big Pontiac fan in my earlier days and recognized a US model 1954 Chieftain with a flathead straight 8. The owner of the shop walks up and we get to yacking about these old girls and how a guy I knew used to have one, etc, etc. Amazingly enough, it’s in good shape but a guy is restoring it anyway. We yack a little longer about the various pitfalls of old car restoration but I can see Allan wants to get on the road, so off we go......headed for points east on Highway #3.
This part of the road is unchallenging, but on the upside has very little traffic so we can make good time. The closer we get to Osoyoos, the warmer it gets, of course, because this area is really a semi-arid desert. We pull into Osoyoos and Allan says that some kind of family friend (or distant relative, I can’t remember which) lives here and he’d like to stop and say hello....if he can remember where these folks live. He knows roughly which part of town they’re in and what the house looks like, so, after a fuel stop, we cruise around and after about 10 minutes or so we find the right place......but no one’s home. Oh well, that’s the way things go sometime. We head back to the Visitors’ Centre and meet a nice couple touring on a 1150 or 1200GS with all the usual gear. I can’t remember where they were from but, IIRC, in Ontario somewhere. The guy used to be some kind of racer there and has his racing number on the GS. IIRC, he’s still involved in vintage racing of some kind. Nice folks.
Off through downtown Osoyoos to the famous East Hill....but first we have to stop at Allan’s favourite fruit stand for some road food for Allan. Back on the road and up the twisty East Hill road to the viewpoint for a photo op. Pics taken, we head out for a very challenging section of Highway #3 before it tops out on the higher plains. This is quite a twisty curvey road for about 20 kilometres or so with weird over-the-rise off-camber curves waiting to catch the unwary. I remember most of this from last year so am loath to do other than try to keep Allan in sight....more or less. He is motoring along quite smartly pulling away from me by giving the Buffalo a good workout in the corners that I’m just cruising through.....but I can reel him in on the straights quite easily so at the finish of the twisties he’s only about a half a kilometre or so ahead of me.
Now we’re onto more unchallenging road untill we hit Grand Forks, about 90 minutes away or so. We motor along at a good clip, passing through Rock Creek (a tiny town with about 4 ice cream places, for some reason). past Rock Creek we experience the only excitement on this part of the trip. This was a wildfire on the mountains about 2 miles off the highway. We stop for some pics of an airplane dropping fire retardant on the fire and then continue on our way, finally arriving in Grand Forks.
The teenage kid who comes out to supervise the gassing-up process is looking at Allan’s bike trying to figure it out and then starts looking at me.....or specifically, my riding jacket. I finish filling up the Bandit and then push it off to the parking area. The kid follows me over and I ask if I can help him. He wants to know if I know about café racers. Bingo...the bulb lights in my head and I remember that I have a “Ton Up Boys M/C” patch on my jacket. The kid is making his version of a café bike out of, of all things, a Honda CB650 Custom, so I go over to have a look at it with him. It’s a rat-café bike but I make the appropriate “noises” about what he’s done with it. I think to myself: He IS living on the far side of the moon when it comes to anything cafe-racerish and he IS trying to do SOMETHING, even in the middle of nowhere with a piece of dung bike, and he’s NOT “building” some “bobber” or “chopper”, so he’s deserving of
encouragement. I tell him to keep working at it and keep finding pics on the Net of what he wants the finished product to look like. He says he realizes that his Honda is NOT the ideal candidate for a café bike but he intends to go on to a more suitable bike as soon as he can. I tell him to keep the “cafe-faith” and we part on a happy note for both of us. At that age we ALL needed encouragement and, coming from a small town myself, I know what he’s faced with regarding parts and advice. I'm glad that I've been able to offer some encouragement to a kid heading in the right direction.
Away from Grand Forks, we head towards the resort area of Christina Lake in the warm late-afternoon sunshine, which is sooooo nice after the cloudy and coolish weather on the coast. If I have to ride on boring roads, I’m happier when it’s sunny and warm. We cruise into the Christina Lake resort area which is not a town as such....rather a bunch of gas stations, boat launches, one bar and some hamburger joints. We find a private campground for the night which turns out to be a great place with large treed lots for tenters and very accommodating owners. Happy hour starts at 4 and BYOB. Lovely !! We get our tents pitched and head back into town for a bite to eat. We end up at a burger joint but....wow.....we MUST be in a resort area by the prices on the menu on the wall !!! We take our lumps at the cash register and dine al fresco while watching the local policia pull over speeders.....interesting dining "entertainment"
....especially since WE’RE not involved. Dinner finished, I stop to pick up some ales for happy hour and we head back to the campground
....only to find that happy hour has ended early due to news of a death in the family of one of the major “movers” of the happy hour party. So we sit there and suck back a few ales and graze the hors d’oeuvres plates that have hardly been touched.
The campground has a laundry so Allan and I both wash up some stuff, my jeans especially. I phone SWMBO on the payphone outside the laundromat and she seems glad to hear from me so that’s all good. Laundry done, we head back to our picnic table and yack for a bit. Allan wants to go exploring so off we go toward the Lower Campground which is on a small twisty river with a small bend that is used as a swimming hole. Allan takes some great pics of the river and the various trees washed up by spring floods. The moon comes up in the soft evening sky and the fish are jumping in the swimming hole feeding on the various bugs. The whole scene with the moon and river and the big Douglas fir trees is very tranquil. It’s a unusually beautiful end to a long day in the saddle.

[oldjapanesebikes]

[two-stroke-brit]

keep it comming

[crash277]

i am so jelous, i cant wait to tour across this great country!!!.