5/21/2005 - Ride to the Valley of the Dammed

Report courtesy of PNWRoadRiders.

I put on 433 miles, the last 100 or so in the rain, so I was too tired to do a ride report last night.

The usual suspects were met
at the Buzz Inn by a couple of newcomers. After breakfast we rode up
to Marblemount via Darrington to meet up with some more
Nighthawk riders. Highlight of that portion of the trip was my getting
everyone lost in a traffic circle in Arlington.

I was the only DUC among a flock of Nighthawks as we rode east on
Highway 20. We took a side road into the town of Diablo at the base of
the dam and viewed the inclined railway. It looks as if it was a
tourist attraction at one time, but from the rust on the rails, it does
not appear to have run recently.

The ride east on Hwy. 20 was good. I have seen "tunnel through the
snow" photos of the highway, but this time there were only remnants of
a few snow banks near the tops of the passes, courtesy of the dry
winter. We stopped at the turnout for the Washington Pass overlook, but
the road is closed. We amused ourselves by watching some birds perch on
the hands of tourists who were givng them food.

We ate lunch in Winthrop, where we saw Roland Vetter siting at the
table next to ours. He was out riding with a friend of his who has a
Harley Touring bike. There were quite a few motorcycles parked in
Winthrop.

We headed east out of Winthrop through Twisp and then took Hwy. 153
southeast to US 97. North of Wenatchee on US 97 traffic got held up
while a very bad auto accident was cleared. As luck would have it, we
rode directly behind a WSP officer returning to Wenatchee from the
accident scene. I did not mind doing the speed limit, but we then got
behind people who proceeded to drive 5-10 mph under the limit. I
decided not press the issue of maximum allowable passing speed, so we
slogged it into Wenatchee.

The weather had been overcast all day, but no rain. It began to
sprinkle after we stopped at Cashmere for gas. I headed west over
Stevens.
We ran into real rain about Berne and the ride west of the summit was
typical: slogging behind a line of traffic going 10 mph under the limit
except for the passing lanes, when they all speed up to 10 mph over the
limit.

Highway 20 had the usual weekend traffic, although many people were
nice enough to pull over for us. I really liked Hwy. 153; nice sweepers
and not much traffic.