CANADA MOTORCYCLE TRIP 2024 - PART 3

 

Riverside State Park

Dam at Riverside State Park

Bridge to Boulder Cr Road

We were on the road by 6:30 the next morning heading southeast on Hwy 3 thankful for dry pavement and no rain. This turned out to be my favorite day of the trip in terms of fun roads, ironically most of it in WA State.

After crossing the border we took a more easterly direction over to Oroville. This is where the fun began. The next three roads to the east were some of the best motorcycle roads I’ve ridden. Most of it in deep woods with a mix of many curves, hills and no traffic. Much of the route was along a stream as well. The first road was the Chesaw Rd, then the Toroda Creek Rd followed by the Boulder Creek Rd.

Another embarrassing incident for me: I had used geocaches as my waypoints to guide me on the route. I reviewed the map with Sam and he said he thought he could get to the cache I was using to guide me through these roads. I like to go faster than Sam on these types of roads so I got a ways ahead of him and couldn’t even see him due to all the curves. Toroda Creek road comes to a tee with Hwy 21 before jogging over to the Boulder Creek Rd. Instead of waiting at the intersection as I should have, I turned north on Hwy 21 and waited a half mile up the road where you had to turn right across an old one-lane bridge to the Boulder Creek Rd. After about a 20 minute wait I knew Sam had turned right on Hwy 21 instead of left and doubted I would ever see him again that day. I didn’t know what to do but proceed on the Boulder Creek Rd. Long story short, after reaching Hwy 395 and turning south I saw Sam waiting at an intersection about a mile or so down the road. I can’t tell you how relieved I was.

We continued down Hwy 395 until a little before Kettle Falls where we turned due south on Hwy 25 which bordered the east side of the Columbia River and was a beautiful ride we had done before. At the little town of Hunters we turned east on the Springfield-Hunters Rd which took us over to Springfield where we connected with Hwy 231 south. We continued on 231 past Ford picking up another geocache  and had lunch in Riverside State Park where Avista has an old dam separating the Spokane River from Long Lake. It was a beautiful shady park and a nice break for us.

At Reardon we took Hwy over to Espanola Rd where we picked up a cache in some shady woods and continued merging into Hwy 902 over to Cheney. We turned south on the Cheney-Plaza Rd and eventually took more country roads going through Malden and Pine City. We crossed Hwy 195 and took Hwy 271 and Hwy 27 which was a very familiar but pleasant motorcycle route for us. This was our longest day and we didn’t reach home until about 5:00 pm having traveled over 1100 miles for the trip. Another great trip in the books for old-timers. M/W