270 miles
Today was all about group riding. In the morning, we all rode together to lunch. In the afternoon, after lunch we rode the first part of the route together and then split into two groups for a road route and an off-road route.
The morning route from the Skamania Lodge to lunch at the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. The first part of the route took us along the north side of the Columbia River Gorge. What was fun was seeing 42 motorcycles try and gas up at stop number two. As far as I was concerned, the pace was “spirited”. There were people complaining it was too slow. The weather was great until we got to about Oregon route 35. We started to head up and into the clouds. It was hard to say whether it was rain or just the cloud but it certainly got wet and cold until we were through it. Some folks head taken off a layer at the gas stop. It was a bad move. I had the heated seat and grips on by the time we reached lunch.
After lunch, we all stayed together until point 4 on the map. We did do another gas stop at point 1 which went a little smoother as there were two gas stations across the road from each other. At point four we split into the on-road and off-road groups. I went with the off-road group which was less off-road and more forest road. It was beautiful going through the forests with some really quiet roads. There were points in time where I wondered whether I was lost. I had no one visible in front of me and no one visible behind me with my GPS telling me it was going to be three hours to get back to the Lodge when I knew it should only be an hour. Both times, I made it back to the group in front of me.
This was the view from my room on the first morning at the hotel. It seemed to be a classic Pacific North West view. Lots of moisture in the sky.
When we arrived at lunch, you could not actually see Mount Hood. It was socked in with clouds. It did not take long for it to clear and give us this fantastic view.
Living in Colorado you always hear that the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is the hotel from the book and the movie “The Shining. Then you naturally assume that it is the hotel that was actually used for the filming. It wasn’t. The hotel used for the exterior filming was the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood.
It was cold up on the mountain. I wore my fleece all through lunch and considered going back and putting my Klim riding jacket back on. It is interesting seeing the tundra here so much farther north than Colorado. It is a lot lower. This is only about 6000′ above sea level. In Colorado, you probably would not expect to see this for another 5000 feet or so.
After we got back to the hotel, I went off to clean up before dinner. The view outside had cleared up from the cloudy morning. I thought when I booked a river view room it would have been closer but not bad either way.
