After that we zipped down to the bottom, then turned around and headed back up. Before we did, I snapped this shot of this bridge over the Salmon River, because in 1976, the American Institute of Steel Construction awarded this bridge it's "Most Beautiful Bridge" for a medium span - high clearance bridge. I don't know about most beautiful, but it's not a bad looking bridge, as bridges go. Getting to the top, we took the Old White Bird Pass road so we could say we went on part of it. Very twisty - it must not have been that much fun for my folks back in the winter of 1962.
Next came the long boring part - north on 95 all the way to Craigmont, then east on 62 to Nez Pierce. I should have asserted some leadership here as my GPS was telling us to take a shortcut on Greencreek Road to 162. Still, it turned out okay because we went on Lawyer Canyon road which is a nice little twisty road through a small canyon. For me this is memorable because while taking a right-hander a little faster than I should have, I was forced to lean the bike way over to stay in my lane and scraped my footpeg for the first time. The V-Strom is a relatively high-sitting bike, so this was a lean of a fair amount and I felt pretty tickled to have done it. My second thought after laughing out loud at how fun that was, was "dang, that would have been an epic picture!"
The day's ride ended taking 162 on into Kamiah and the campground. We parked our bikes and due to tempertures in the 90's decided to take a dip in the pool. Did I mention that it was unheated? "Refreshing!" was Bill's term for it. It did take the heat out of you for sure. We then sat down with some of the other guys for dinner to hear how their ride in the mountain dirt had been. After that we gathered in the meeting room to look at pictures and video of everybody else's rides from Friday and Saturday. It was a fun end to a great day!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday dawned a bit less blue than the previous days. After a shower to clean up, we headed in for a nice worship service and short talk by Tim McCart, the new CMA Fastlane representative for the state of Washington. Tim, a former pastor, lives in Spokane and gave a great message from Matthew 20. After that, we all packed up our stuff and made our way out of camp getting breakfast in Kamiah at the Hearthstone Bakery. Bill, Dave, and I planned on heading north through Orofino, Ahsahka, and up to Kendrick. then Troy and on to Moscow. Tim McCart and Jeff Mahawold joined us for our ride home. Bill chose another great route pass the Dworshak Dam, which was impressive looking as we rode through Ahsahka, but the road out of town serpentined like a live snake up the hill to the farmland above. Once we got up top we discovered the wind was blowing pretty hard and didn't change (other than increasing) all the way into Spokane.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
