Patti and Wayne's Grand Adventure: Back in the Saddle again!!!

Before I get started on our new adventures, I have to address the obvious! I can't believe that it has been an entire year since I have posted anything. It's true! After Wayne broke his leg last year, I just dropped the ball. Yes, my camera broke. Yes, my phone's battery won't last long enough to make it through a whole ride. Yes, we were in places where we have been many times before. But that shouldn't stop me. I promise to try to do better! As a bonus, I am going to go back to our big summer ride and start this back up with a bang. We hope you enjoy the trip!

August 2015

In August Wayne and I, along with our friends Lyon, Cindy and Bob took our Suzuki DRZ 400's through Washington and British Columbia for a 2 week back country camping trip. We decided to meet at the Washington/Oregon border, to start on the WaBDR (AKA the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route). Cindy and Bob would come up from Redmond OR and Lyon would come over from the Portland area. Wayne and I started in Monroe WA, where we left the motorhome, and the cats! For us this would be a 16 day 2268 mile Big Adventure!

To start, we had to travel south to the Columbia River. We had planned on doing the 250 miles in one day, but just weeks before we were due to leave, I spent a week in the hospital fighting an infection in my knee and Wayne decided to do a nose dive off the top of a friends van. Amazingly he didn't break anything or do any major damage to himself, however I thought my heart was going to stop. It was the single most scary thing I have ever had to watch. But after lots of massage and chiropractic care, he decided that he could ride. So I broke our first day into two, and we took it easy on the way south.

Packed up and ready to go.

We left Monroe going south on State Route (SR) 203 to Snoqualmie. We then took SR 18 to Hobart, then headed south to Enumclaw. There we headed south on SR 410. We stopped at Crystal Mtn Ski Area just to see how much it has changed since my last trip there about 35 years ago. Look at all the 'stuff' we have on those bikes.

We took SR 123 south to the Mt Rainier National Park road, and went out to where we could finally see the mountain. It had been so cloudy we hadn't really seen him all day. Then it was west on US 12 to Packwood.

We stayed at the Cowlitz Lodge, I figured that Wayne should have one last night sleeping in a bed, with that bad back. There was a heard of small elk that were grazing through town and napping on the front lawn.

Day two of the trip south had us going through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest with occasional views of Mt St Helens. We have spent a lot of time in the GP over the years camping and riding our off road motorcycles. This would be a different kind of ride for us.

We arrived at the campground in Cascade Locks OR to find that we were the last to arrive. That's pretty typical...

It was a very pretty campground, but nice views did NOT make up for the fact that 80 trains go right by the campground each 24 hours. Nobody got any sleep that night. What a way to start our trip!