My longest trip in one day. And I loved every minute of it!
We departed at 9:00am with a loose plan, traveling a road we've never been on before through wine country. The lack of traffic and hilly, windy roads made it interesting.
My riding confidence is getting better with each trip.
We traveled down Hwy 14 and crossed over the Columbia River at Biggs Junction to fill up. My scooter got 60 miles to the gallon on the first stretch. I loved that. Traveling through a couple of itty bitty towns to get to the falls was one of my favorite parts of the day. Seeing motorcycles lined up in front of a local small café always does my heart good. I know those small businesses rely on summer traffic to stay alive. We packed our lunch. Boo hiss on us. I knew it was going to be a super long day so spending an hour in a café was not what I wanted to do.
There are lots of things to write about from the trip but the one thing that stands out is our experience when we arrived at the state park. The camp host was a Marine and our riding partner, Doug ("Dougie Fresh" as nicked-named by my cousin Lil P) yelled "Semper Fi" the moment he quieted his noisy, orange Harley. I marvel at how people from various groups recognize one another. I overheard Doug talking about the guy's Marine Corp flag and sure enough, I spotted it.
Anyhow, the Marine rode over to our picnic table on his John Deere cart and joined our conversation. Pretty soon an old, graying golden retriever was at my feet begging for attention. Sweet dog! I wondered who he belonged to. Turns out some family came visiting the park one day and told the very kind camp host that the dog was lined up to be put down and he rescued him. With that, I offered our new Marine friend a fresh baked cookie.
The rest of the trip was like most riding days ... full of sunshine, wind and sun in our faces and an occasional deer and hawk. I was certainly ready to get off that torturous seat by the time we rolled into the driveway 11 hours later than we started.
One more great day in the bag. I'll be ready to go again soon.
love, susan
Sounds like a magnificent ride! And kudos to your Marine buddy for saving that dog! He earned his angel wings!
ReplyDeleteHi Michele! Thanks for reading and commenting. Summer is here and we are goin' crazy trying to enjoy every minute of it. I wish I had taken a picture of the dog to add to this post but I wasn't even thinking about blogging while I was riding. Oh well, he was cute! The dog, that is.
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