Wenatchee to Yakima

I'd like to take a minute to describe how we navigate on a trip like this.  After all, driving 2500 miles to a region about which we know almost nothing seems like a prescription for getting lost and seeing nothing interesting in the bargain. So, here's our highly secret process.

We start with Butler maps, which are designed specifically for motorcycle touring.  The maps generally focus on a single state and feature highly detailed descriptions of what they find to be points of interest and the most scenic routes.  The best routes are color coded...red roads are good, orange roads are better and yellow are the best and most scenic.  Over the years I have come to trust these maps implicitly...I've never found an error.  Now why in hell did I just say that?

 

The route plan starts with these maps and begins with deciding where we'll start and end the day. Next we'll pick an intermediate point from the map that lies along this route and then enter that into the Garmin GPS's that came on our BMW's.  This gives us detailed, real time turn-by-turn instructions.  Once we arrive in the intermediate point, we'll use the Butler Maps to choose a new intermediate point that's along our planned route. And so on.

With 50 miles or so remaining, I enter our hotel address into the GPS (the GPS's have extensive data bases with gas stations, restaurants and lodging) and this takes us directly to our hotel.  It's so simple a retired telcom exec can do it.

OK, I now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast...

When I poked my head out of the hotel this morning I was treated to a picture perfect morning...cool temps, blue skies, no wind, no humidity.  Such a refreshing change from the insufferable heat and humidity we've languished under in Georgia.  And ideal conditions for motorcycling.  Which is good thing, considering that our planned route was an ambitious one...300 miles as it turned out.  Or perhaps our route was an ambitious one because we had great weather.  So grasshopper, which is it?

By 8:30AM we pulled onto Hwy 97 and followed the Wenatchee River northwest from Wenatchee.  When Hwy 97 finally turned south, through the Wenatchee National Forest the road climbed steadily for the next 15 miles and with every foot of elevation gained the temperature dropped.  At the summit it was 36 degrees and I was under dressed and cold and I toyed with pulling over to change gloves and add my heated jacket.  But as we began dropping down the back side of the mountain I warmed up and never had to change gear.

At Hwy 970 we turned left and headed west toward Teanaway and Hwy 10 which took us into Ellensburg along the magnificent Yakima River, a blue ribbon trout stream, avoiding the interstate as much as we could.

Near Ellensburg we hopped on I-90, then I-82 for maybe 20 minutes on the interstates, exiting onto Hwy 821 which wound through canyons formed millions of years ago from lava flows.  A sign along the road said this was an ancient lava field which was 200,000 square miles (not acres, miles) and was 10,000 feet deep.

Ponder them dimensions soldier.

The Yakima River  continued along the route and the drift boats were out in numbers...it was very tough for me to just ride past this and not fish.

 By 11:30AM we were close to Yakima which was our destination for today, but the real destination lay a hundred miles to the west.  We turned onto Hwy 12 and motored to Naches where we stopped for lunch at the Drift Inn Restaurant.  Walking in the front door I was greeted by that sight that chills the soul of any hungry diner...not another soul in the whole damn place other than one waitress and the cook. Hmm...

But, being the bold adventurers that we are, we took our table and stuck our faces into the menus.  We concluded the only safe choice was a burger, which turned out to be pretty good.

Our waitress was efficient, but had a pretty stern manner.  I joked with her about the extra pickles I asked for and told her she looked kind of mean.

She said, "I am mean".

I said, "I bet you were a mean little kid, weren't you?".

She said, "Yeah, I was a biter".

She never cracked a smile.

From the diner, we gassed up and headed for Mount Rainier National Park up Hwy 410.  With about 20 miles to go before we entered the park, Mount Rainier, all 14,411 feet of it, suddenly appeared.  It was a shock...so huge, covered with glaciers and fresh snow...it looked fake.  We also spotted Mount Rainier's little brother, Mt. Adams (12,281') and it would have been the star of the show if Rainier wasn't there.

As we closed in on the park the scenes were just awesome.  Something like Glacier park but with views somewhat restricted because of the dense redwood and hemlock forests.  I thought about the places we've been over the last two weeks and the diverse scenery in which we've been immersed...the ancient Appalachians of home, the table flat Midwest, the massive peaks of the Rockies, the rolling wheat fields and high desert of central Washington and now the majesty of the Cascades and one of its all-stars, Mount Rainier.

Just wow.

We rode directly to the visitor center on Sunrise Park Dr. which sits at about 6,000'.  The mountain so totally dominates the terrain...it towers over the landscape and seems to look down on you.  The visitors had a kind of hushed reverence...like we were in the presence of an alien being who's intentions weren't really clear.  Or maybe it was like some guy at a party who gets too close to your face...the mountain is so immense that it seemed to be intruding in my space.  But beautifully so.

I talked to a park ranger in the visitor center about snow fall on the mountain.  He was an energetic ambassador for the park and reveled in talking about the mountain.

Fun Facts:

1.  It has snowed on every single calendar day of the year
2.  On the eastern side of Mount Rainer the average snowfall is 350 inches per year.
3.  On the western side of the mountain, which is exposed to the Pacific, the average is over 650 inches per year.
4.  The record snowfall was in 1972 with a total of over 1100 inches or nearly 100 feet.
5.  Oh yeah, it snowed two days ago.

Again, I cannot stress enough what a jaw dropping sight this mountain is.  I've seen Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and more and I have never seen a sight like Mount Rainier.  Enough said.

We hauled ass back to Yakima on Hwy 12 and passed Rimrock Lake which KC estimated was 100' below its full pool and sported a totally dry lake bed for about half its length.  But at the end of the lake the river pouring out of it was bursting with water...enough to run white water kayaks on.  Odd.

Our tally for today was right at 300 miles...a long day for me and I'm pretty tired.  But I've got a blog to write and photos to process and a route to plan for tomorrow.

Better get busy.

Postscript:  I wish I'd been able to photograph the massive fruit orchards we rode past.  If the Midwest is our corn belt and central Washington is our wheat belt, this part of Washington is our fruit belt...at least our apple belt.   The orchards we saw, many of them groaning under the load of ripe fruit in the midst of harvest, went on for miles.  The fruit was packed into large crates and carried on trucks similar in size to what we see chickens carried on in Georgia.

We saw an unusual shape to many of the trees which resulted in each tree growing in a "V" shape. My limited research tells me that the growers do this as a way to make harvest easier and to maximize the yield.