Thursday, July 25 2019
We broke camp at the normal hour of 8am and headed toward Goldendale so we could take the road down through Klickitat. At one point I had taken a wrong turn and stopped to check the map. Realizing what we had done, we turned around and got on the right road. Then I discovered I was missing my glasses. NOT AGAIN!!! This would make the fourth pair I’ve lost on motorcycle trips. My eyesight is only a tad off normal and sometimes I don’t notice when I’m not wearing them. I must have set them down, rode off, they fell (somewhere) and now I don’t have them. Tim and I circled around for about 45 minutes looking for them, but they were gone. I was pretty pissed at myself for losing them. I could just imagine what Vicki was going to say. But, they’re gone and there’s no use crying over it. So by about 9am we continued toward Goldendale on the Glendale-Trout Lake road. Forty-five minutes later we turned down on the road to Klickitat which in places is pretty much just one lane. It’s a tight little canyon. We stopped in town to fill up Tim’s bike and then continued on down to the Columbia.
Now begins the long slog on the highway along the Columbia River. It’s hot, windy, and the scenery is not really that great unless you like sagebrush. We stopped at the Stonehenge replica which is a war memorial and is pretty cool. They have another memorial right near it for WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. I’ve been there a number of times, but it’s worth stopping again. I realized somewhere along the way that I probably should have filled up my gas tank because I was getting low. Not dangerously close, but low. We stopped in Paterson at 12:30pm for lunch which 
was pretty good at the local diner there. Then continued on to Umatilla, Oregon where we filled up again. From there we rode along US 730 toward Walla Walla. Tim had said there was supposedly something cool to see where Fort Walla Walla originally stood, so we checked that out, then continued on east. On the outskirts of Walla Walla lies the Whitman Mission which was another historical place I wanted to visit. It was pretty cool, but my personal conclusion was that Whitman was a pretty arrogant white man who figured to civilize the heathen Indians without due consideration of their culture. This has unfortunately been repeated many times in history.
We then rode past most of Walla Walla because I wanted to find a grocery store on the east side of town, figuring to save time that way. It didn’t work out. We couldn’t find anything obvious and so I pulled over to see what my phone could tell me. I had my helmet off and starting to look when a cop pulls around the corner going the opposite way and stops to ask if we’re lost or just taking a break. I told him we were looking for a grocery store and he told us if we’re not "skittish" we could go to a Safeway not too far, but close to downtown.
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.
