TravellingStrom

Thursday – Buckley, Washington

No rush again today, it was a cool morning, but once the sun came up over Mt Baker it started to warm up nicely 🙂

I wanted to find this road to Silverton and my TomTom was useless, it was going the wrong way, but I knew better because the map showed a road. I just started to head south and it was not long before I was on a road that took me the way I wanted, it was even called the mountain loop road, sounded good to me 🙂

It was not long though before to turned to dirt, it was hard to make out at first because with sunnies on in the shadows I could not see the road, but I felt it get a bit slippery which woke me up, it was loose surface gravel 🙂

I decided to deflate the tyres as I had no idea how long the gravel lasted, and with it twisting and turning, I may need the extra traction. This turned out to be a good idea as the road went to single lane and oncoming traffic! This is when I also aske my GPS to take me to Silverton again, this time it knew wehre it was and asked if I wanted to continue as it contained gravel roads, of course I said yes, sometimes it just needs a bit of help 🙂

The views occasionally through the trees were nice ones of the river, there were a lot of fallen trees through this section, I guess they leave it as nature leaves it, unless the trees block the road which sometimes looked as if it had been blocked by landslides recently.

By the way, if some of the photos are a bit fuzzy, I have no screen at the moment so I am guessing when I take pictures of what image mode I am in and also the framing. It was only a few more miles of dirt before I hit the paved road on the other side where I found a nice spot to re inflate the tyres. I also broke my 12V outlet at the back of the bike, another repair to do soon.

From here is was just a more trafficked road west, I went through Granite Falls and headed south to Monroe where I bought some lunch/dinner and fuelled up again.

Before leaving here I had a sort of plan finally, I just needed some info, so I called a chap in Oregon, who had invited me over a while back. I needed to know when was a good time for him, weekend or week days, after a chat it was decided that late Sunday was good for him and it would have to be this weekend as he also wanted to go to Spokane for the Iron Butt finish next weekend.

Well, that suited me, I could now work out a route via Mt Rainer, Mt St Helens and some coast to his place, then work east in a big loop to Boise Idaho, then north to a few other people who had also expressed an interest in my travels and offered me a bed etc 🙂 So, although I hate planning, when there are a group of places scattered all over three states, even I need some basic idea 🙂

Anyway, onwards I spent the next hour or so getting off the main roads, I still did not have a real map of the state, but I generally headed south ish, I was thinking of Enumclaw as a place to stay. It was at the start of a nice ride through the Mt Rainer NP and looked like a good ending for the day.

I eventually got my first glimpse of Mt Rainer, it is the highest peak in Washington.

I found a visitors centre at Enumclaw, but after checking out the accommodation in town I grabbed a state map and headed to Buckley, just down the road where I found a cheaper motel 🙂 No internet which left me some time to read a book and have some dinner, before wandering down to the Firehouse Pub.

This was quite busy, nice food, although I had already eaten, but I only had a couple of beers and watched the baseball before heading back. I can tell I am in the states again, the beer prices went down dramatically! 🙂

Basically I had a quiet night, met a chap called Gus who rides 2 stroke dirt bikes and is looking for something a bit better in a 4 stroke, maybe a Vstrom, maybe a KTM, who knows. Also another chap called OJ, we talked about bikes, well more about the difference between Bikers and Bikies, he is an ex Gypsy Joker, I mentioned the new laws coming into effect in Oz and the reasons behind them. He mentioned that that type of behaviour is way behind the times and most bikie clubs over here are clean as a whistle 🙂

We also tried to discuss the difference between shrimp and prawns. They had prawns on the menu, but apparently these are fresh water prawns, but very large, so I am thinking a crawtchy, maybe a red claw type of thing, they had none in stock so I could not get one to look at, maybe another time 🙂

I did not stay long as I wanted a clear head for tomorrow:)

Day 159 miles and 256 km
Trip – 33,217 miles and 53,458 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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