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The BEST First Ride to Montana – Leg 1 – Columbia Gorge to Walla Walla, WA
By Craig Rollins

It was in the steamy heat of July when the mountain streams still run morning cool and the rich verdant green of the Northwest strikes the eye with the best of God’s beauty. The majestic mountains of ‘Big Sky’ Montana beckoned its call. This was to be our first real ride on our recently purchased 2000 big-bore Yamaha Roadstar. At least it was big bore for its time, boasting 1600 cc – 98 cubic inches of rompin’ v-twin performance. Add Cobra slash-cut pipes to this baby and you’re ready for some good soundin’, throttle grabbin’ riding.

We live in Washougal, WA, on the west end of the Columbia River Gorge scenic byway, a 80-mile natural geologic wonder created by the timeless waters of the great Columbia River. The mouth of the Gorge is just minutes from our home, east on Washington State Road 14. The Columbia River Gorge is flanked by two major highways; I-84, a 4-lane interstate on the Oregon side, and SR14, a two-lane state road on the Washington side. Either offer gorgeous [no pun intended] views of the Columbia River and its picturesque gorge. If time is the priority, I-84 is the way to go, but for the true touring rider Washington’s SR14 delivers breath-taking views and winding 2-lane happiness.

Heading east from Washougal in July you’ll struck by the awesome beauty of the gorge. Looking to the Oregon-side of the river you’ll glimpse a dozen or so shaft-like waterfalls dropping to the Columbia along Oregon’s historic Columbia River Highway – Oregon’s Route 66 gorge counterpart – food for another day-ride article.

The first stop on SR14 comes 10 miles into the ride – just minutes after becoming awash in forested beauty. Cape Horn Skye is a pull off on the east side of the road, but be prepared to stop or you’ll miss it and think, “Wow that’s a perfect place for a photo-op” as you move-on down the fir-lined road. But if you do make the stop, up the gorge to the east on the north side of the river, you’ll see a solid rock promitory called Beacon Rock. SR14 passes this landmark and you can see it close-up down the road. If you do stop at the Cape, a must photo is you and your fellow riders with Beacon Rock and the gorge in the background. And for you Twilight movie fans, the view of the Cape is the background when Edward & Bella are in the tops of the trees.

Another 15 minutes and you’re at Beacon Rock State Park. You can stop at the ranger station for details on nearby camping. Rest rooms are just across the highway at the base of Beacon Rock. If you’re up for it, a hike up the 848 ft. rock is a great activity. The ¾ mile trek takes about 45 minutes up and 20 minutes down. The switchback trail, built by Henry Biddle in 1918, features handrails and bridges, but is steep at times and will definitely get your blood pumping. You’ll want to have your camera with you for memorable views and panoramas in all directions at the summit.

Refreshed from your hike and potty-break, you’ll continue east on SR14 past Beacon Rock Golf Course [a majestically beautiful 9-hole course] followed shortly by the town of North Bonneville. The next attraction is Bonneville Dam, the 8th largest of 14 power generating dams along the Columbia River and the first of four dams straddling Washington and Oregon. Bonneville Dam consists of several dam structures that span the Columbia River. You can take tour of the facility, and be sure to catch the fish viewing areas, located on both Washington and Oregon sides of the dam. The facility is open from 9am-5pm year round, but the best viewing is April through September when fish are more prevalent.

Four miles further on SR14 is the ‘Bridge of the Gods’ toll bridge, the first of several bridges spanning the Columbia and only 2 miles beyond the Bridge of the Gods, north of SR14 is one of our favorite hotels, Skamania Lodge. The lodge features 254 guest rooms, scenic dining and a superbly challenging 18-hole golf course set amidst Northwest fir. If you happen to arrive there on a Friday evening, be sure to feast on their delectable Gorge Harvest Buffet in the Cascade Room. You’ll not find a more palate pleasing buffet anywhere in the Northwest. The menu is linked here for your dining pleasure – Gorge Harvest Buffet. Just across and down the road from Skamania lodge is the Columbia River Interpretive Center Museum, which features a reflective stroll through the history of Washington’s native Indian culture, timber and train industries. Just watch for the signs and turn left off SR14 to visit these attractions.

As you’ve surmised, this ride centers on non-stop scenic beauty, and the next stunning installment is just around the corner – a striking view of Mt. Hood – backdrop to Hood River, OR. You’ve also entered the wind surfing nexus of the world. Unique to the area, the gorge forms the most exquisite geologic wind tunnel on the planet. This world renowned area beckons the faithful to throng the area for 30 plus mph winds that whip the river to a white-capped froth and speed the initiated and neophyte to the pinnacle of exhilaration. The multihued spectacle will tease your need-for-speed and propel you smiling on your way. Another convenient bridge grants entrance to this historic, friendly Oregon village and should you choose to cross, will reward you with quaint arty shops and appetizing eateries.

Onward east, you’ll pass through a number of small towns and notice a move to a more arid landscape. Past Dallesport, OR ~18 miles you’ll pass Mary Hill Winery and come to Mary Hill Museum of Art, built by the late Samuel Hill and completed by a wealthy friend. The museum opened to the public in 1940 and features a rich repertoire of art along with special events, like Ansel Adams: Masterwork July 18-September 13, 2009.

Beyond the museum and worth a detour is Washington’s Stonehenge – yes that’s right, a full-size replica of England’s Stonehenge, also built by Sam Hill.

Time to check your fuel gauge! Just across the Columbia is Biggs, OR, and the last gas stop for roughly two hours.

Now here are some directions to keep you on the correct roads. Returning to Washington state from Biggs, travel ~85 miles east on SR14 to I-82. Take a right on to I-82 south. Cross over the Columbia River to Oregon Highway 730. Turn left on 730 east. Travel 25 miles to SR12, then turn right on SR12 for ~29 miles and you’ll arrive at Walla Walla, WA.

Walla Walla is an oasis on the plains of Washington – a thriving metropolis of 30,000. One can trace the city’s history back to Lewis & Clark and missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Walla Walla boasts a thriving economy with retail stores, restaurants – even a Wal-Mart. It’s also a college town with two colleges, Whitman College and Walla Walla Community college, and Walla Walla University, so you know it’s got to be rockin’. We spent the first night of our first trip to Montana in Walla Walla and recommend staying at either the Comfort Inn, or the Marcus Whitman Hotel. The later is an historic landmark and features an excellent restaurant.

But above all, Walla Walla means one thing to us – onions, Walla Walla onions – huge gigantic sweet juicy Walla Walla onions, and these fabulous onions make the best, most delicious, most flavorful onion rings in the WORLD. Try’em, you’ll like’em. They’re our favorite!!

Well, that’s it. That completes the first leg of the BEST first ride to Montana. We hope it’s as satisfying and enjoyable for you as it was for us.
The Best First Ride to Montana – Leg 2 – Walla Walla, WA to Missoula, MT 317 Miles

The start of our day 2 was Sunday. Walla Walla has over 50 churches and just about every denomination. We enjoyed sacrament meeting with some good friends, returned to our room at the Whitman, changed clothes and headed-out for a sunny day of Eastern Washington riding. We caught WA-12 northeast and rode through a number of small towns – Dayton, Roman, Whetstone, Tucannon, and then took a right at Delaney and the junction of WA-12 and WA- 261. The distance from Walla Walla to Delaney is roughly 46 miles and takes about an hour. Traveling east now, WA-12 wanders through rolling hills of wheat fields and farms for another hour – ~52 miles – to the sister cities of Clarkston, WA and Lewiston, ID.

Named after famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Clarkston and Lewiston flank the Snake River, which runs north eventually flowing into the Great Columbia River. The setting for another great ride is just 100 miles south – Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Park. Please stay tuned for an itinerary of this national treasure. Either of these towns provides a good respite – time to stretch your legs and refresh your backside, have a snack, liquid refreshment or meal. We stopped for a quick salad at Jack-in-the-Box, a popular fast food chain that holds charm for our family from our time in the Bay Area. The outlets are clean and the food is fresh and inexpensive. It’s also a good time to refuel. While there are gas stations between here and Missoula, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Leaving Lewiston, you’ll stay on Highway 12, traveling in an easterly direction along the Clearwater River to Orofino [43 miles, 55 mins]. Then southeast to Kooskia [32 miles, 38 mins] before turning east northeast for the 101-mile ride through the Bitter Range Mountains and up to Lolo Pass, MT elev 5,233ft.

We think the journey from Lewiston to Lolo Pass is one of the most beautiful mountain rides we’ve taken. Climbing roughly 4,500 ft, the road parallels crisp mountain streams with enough twists and turns for the most enthusiastic motorcyclist. Believe me; my throttle wrist experienced the workout of a lifetime on this stretch of road. There are a number of turnouts and historic markers along the way to satisfy the cruising historian and rest the weary traveler.

From Lolo Pass it’s about an hour’s ride to Missoula, Mt. But before you arrive in Missoula there’s a restaurant you’ve got to stop and enjoy – Guy’s Lolo Creek Steakhouse, 6600 Highway 12 West, Lolo, MT 59847, 406-273-2622. This rustic log style restaurant delivers a true Montana ‘Big Sky’ meal, with superb steak in three sizes, grilled over a cracklin’ barbeque spit. The menu also offers chicken and seafood and all entrees are finished with baked potato, salad and bread. The taxidermy lined walls complete the restaurants rugged hunting-lodge feel. Guy sold the steakhouse several years ago, but reports from my friends in Missoula confirm the eatin’ is as good as ever. To my palette, the Lolo Creek Steakhouse is one of the best steakhouses anywhere. The restaurant is closed Monday, with no lunch offering.

Missoula is the second largest city in Montana, home to the University of Montana. Missoula is alive with activity. It offers a full complement of services and retail including Harley, Honda, Yamaha and BMW dealers. Missoula also provides numerous hotels, motels and restaurants. We stayed at the Sleep Inn, which is near the University.

The next morning, I was fascinated by my first glimpse of ‘Big Sky Country.’ There is something about Montana – the sky REALLY IS BIG! I can’t put my finger on why, but I almost felt as though I would drift away, weightless, into Montana’s massive, overwhelming blue. It’s truly an amazing thing. You’ve got to experience it to believe it.

That brings us to the close of the second day of our BEST first ride to Montana – a great ride through awe-inspiring beauty to a wide-open, friendly, inviting city. Stay tuned for the next installment in this series, and Sleep tight!

The BEST First Ride to Montana – Leg 3 – Missoula, MT to Coeur D’Alene, ID – 275 Miles
By Craig Rollins

Day 3 of our ride to Montana started early. I couldn’t wait to be up-and-about to check out ‘Big Sky Country’. An I’ll tell you, ‘Big Sky’ is exactly right. I felt like I was spared from falling into the wide open blue by some magical glue that kept me anchored to earth. I expected to be sucked skyward, a feeling akin to the awe I felt when I first witnessed the majesty of the Grand Canyon. The morning was incredible – not a cloud in the sky – just the golden glow of another stunning sunny day to ride.

While we didn’t make an exhaustive tour of Missoula, we did see enough to know we’d love to stay, but the road was calling, so we headed out. My passion to see Montana was triggered by a movie, ‘Last of the Dogmen’, starring Tom Berenger and Barbara Hershey. The story centers on a broken-down but skillful bounty hunter [Tom Berenger] who is hired by his estranged father-in-law [Kurtwood Smith] to hunt three armed escape convicts loose in Montana’s Oxbow Quadrangle. I was overwhelmed by the splendor of the mountains and resolved to make my way there. And dang, here we were right at the proverbial doorstep of the Oxbow. YeeeHawwwww!

It wasn’t until we arrived in Missoula and took a closer look at the map that we realized a town in Montana bore our family name – Rollins. So we HAD to get there and check it out. To get there, we took I-90 west to MT-93 north bound for Flathead Lake and Rollins. The ride was kind-of pretty, but unremarkable. Yet, the promise of viewing the ‘Dogmen’ mountains and our namesake was almost as motivating as the sheer pleasure of riding..

The jaunt to Rollins of fewer than 100 miles, took about 2 hours. Rollins is a quaint little lakeshore resort town with Post Office, gas station/convenience store and burger stand [just south of the town]. The later caught our attention, advertising ‘Buffalo Burgers’. So, we made a stop and frankly enjoyed our first and only ‘Buffalo Burger.’ We ask about the origins of the town and learned that a ferryman by the name of Rollins founded the settlement in the early 1900s. He ferried customers across Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. In addition to tranquil splendor, the lake offers world-class fishing with rainbow, cutthroat, bull, lake, and brook trout, as well as arctic grayling, bass, perch, and pike. We didn’t have gear, but if you’re into fishing, Flathead sounds like a great place to spend a weekend or a week!

We left Rollins south, back down MT-93 roughly 11 miles and took a right onto MT-28. This was a very enjoyable ride. The road was old but solid with virtually no traffic. About an hour down 93, you’ll pass just east of a local hot spot, literally, Hot Springs, MT. We didn’t pause to the enjoy the springs, but were told it’s wonderfully relaxing.

MT-28 intersects MT-200. We took a left and then about 5 miles south, we took a right onto MT-135. Now, prepare yourself for one of the most beautiful rides of your life. MT-135 cuts through the mountains and runs alongside a gorgeous mountain river – and oh what beauty. The river is perfect for ‘tame’ tubing, and we observed watched a number of families inner tubing in the Montana sunshine. I’ll bet there’d be some good fishing there too. From time-to-time we’d pass a mountain resort, and I thought more than once, a family retreat here would be fabulous. I was disappointed when we left nature’s beauty and returned to the concrete reality of I-90 at St. Regis, MT.

St. Regis is a typical truck stop community. We gassed-up, enjoyed a snack and were on the freeway north for Coeur d’Alene, ID. The ride to Coeur d’Alene is 95 miles on I-90, which runs east and west across the United States from Chicago to Seattle. The stretch from St. Regis to Coeur d’Alene lopes through the Montana-Idaho mountains with stunning vistas and pine-laden mountain-scapes. What marvelous beauty. What humbling greatness.

Appearance of the placid resort waters of Coeur d’Alene Lake, the area’s keynote attraction; heralded our arrival to Coeur d’Alene. The city of over 50,000, is devoted primarily to tourism and enjoys a full complement of hotels, motels, restaurants and services. We stayed in a popular discount chain I’ll not mention nor recommend. In subsequent trips we’ve continued on to Post Falls, ID. – a smaller, but more inviting community. In Post Falls, there’s a cool 60’s restaurant – the Hot Rod Café. Bike night is Thursday from May through September. The Hot Rod menu features a great selection of burgers, sandwiches, appetizers, desserts and beverages. And the food is as great tasting as the atmosphere is fun.

That brings us to the end of the third day of our trip – a day of ‘Big Sky’ vistas and riding tranquility – the conclusion of Leg 3 of our BEST first ride to Montana.

The Best First Ride to Montana – Leg 4 – Coeur D’Alene, ID Back Home to Washougal, WA
By Craig Rollins

I couldn’t believe it – this was the final day of our first Montana ride. We’re headed home. The sun in the east was warm and inviting, but the morning air was brisk and a bit nippy. The eastern sky was beautifully blue, but as we directed our Road Star westward, the fabled, or in some cases, dreaded gray overcast of the Northwest loomed on the horizon. As beautiful as the weather had been, I couldn’t believe we were destined for rain, but the closer we got to Spokane on I-90, the cooler the temperatures got. We’d gassed up in Coeur d’Alene, so blew right through Spokane – just catching glimpses of the city’s skyline.

At Spokane, I-90 turns left to the southwest and to our relief, away from the gloomy gray. If fact, with every tick of the odometer, the heavens were returning to the royal blue, sun drenched skies we’d become accustomed to. While we loved the return of fairer weather, we soon became aware of boiling heat. Even with our flip-face helmets wide open, we felt wave after wave of hot scorching air reflecting from the pavement – occasionally bolstered by a torrid surge from our ‘air-cooled’ V-twin. However, this discomfort paled in comparison with the joyful satisfaction of riding, and smelling and feeling the rolling-hill resplendence of Central Washington. Mile after mile, we coursed through flowing golden-grained wheat fields, occasionally interrupted by an aluminum-bladed windmill or grain mill.

Roughly 1 hour southwest of Spokane, I-90 turns due west and Seattle. We stayed on WA-395 in a southwesterly direction for another hour and arrived at the Tri-Cities of Pasco, Richland and Kennewick. We found a truck stop just outside of Pasco a welcome break from the heat, and took the opportunity to refuel us and the bike. We found the highway through this area a bit confusing. WA-395 intersects I-182 so we traveled east for a few miles, then WA-395 turns south again, crosses the Columbia River and then drops into Kennewick. Just follow the signs for WA-395 and you should be good. We didn’t stop in Kennewick, but it’s a nice community and there are lots of shops, restaurants, or anything else you might need. From Kennewick, the junction with WA-14 is 22 miles. As I mentioned in Leg 1 of this trilogy plus one, WA-14 is by far the most interesting of the highways paralleling the Columbia, but if speed and saving time is your priority, you can save about 3/4 hour traveling toward Portland on I-84.

The trip to Washougal is simply the reverse of Leg 1’s itinerary, and brings us back to our humble abode. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our BEST first ride to Montana. Better yet, we hope you’ll take this ride and then let us know how you enjoyed it. We sure did. In fact, we’ve made the trip several times since. Stop by our website soon for another great ride.

Craig Rollins is a senior marketing communications professional. He and his wife are motorcycle advocates and love touring the US. Craig’s website is http://CraigsFavoritesList.com which fouses on motorcycing and products or services Craig has experienced that deliver excellence.

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