2020 Washington BDR (Back Country Routes)
On fairly short notice (5 days) I decided to ride my R1250 GSA from San Diego to ride the WABDR which goes from the Bridge of the Gods near Portland Oregon to the Canadian Border near Night Hawk. The WABDR is 575 miles of mostly unpaved roads that wind along the Eastern Cascades past volcanoes and stunning forests.
DAY 1:
I started from San Diego Monday morning on 8/17 and rode to San Bernadino to meet Cooper and start our ride. The goal was to camp and hotel it to Washington over 4 days. Unfortunately the COVID thing resulted in half the campgrounds and national forest areas being closed and and an over abundance of people out camping after months of being cooped up at home. We ended up spending Monday night in the Mariott Courtyard in Morgan Hill after 12 hours of riding.
Our first day had us taking the 210 to the 134 to the 101 to the 1 for a leisurely drive through Santa Barbara, Los Osos and Morro Bay, San Simeon and towards Big Sur. We got a close up of one of the many fires burning in Califonia as we passed Davenport and saw a place where the fires literally were burning right to the cliffs above the highway. We stopped to take pictures and ponder the destructiveness of this fire and the other huge fires that we could see evidence of in the distance. The plan was to head up to the Prewitt Ridge area , just south of Big Sur, in National Forest to camp but after riding up 12 miles of twisties to the Prewitt Ridge Road we found it closed. So, back down to the Hwy 1 and continuing north looking for a place to stay. After passing through Big Sur and getting all the way to Monterey we made a late decision to head over to Morgan Hill and finished the day with 450 miles of pavement behind us.
DAY 2:
We started fairly early on Tuesday and made a decision to backtrack to Watsonville and then head north to Santa Cruz. We made a quick stop on the Santa Cruz pier to check out the sights, buy stickers for the bikes and get a few minutes off the saddle. Soon we were back on the road enjoying the endless miles of winding roads, cliffs, beaches and lots of slow traffic. We continued on Hwy 1 up through Half Moon Bay and Pacifica and finally onto the 101 through the San Francisco area and across the Golden Gate Bridge. We made a short stop at the view point on the north side of the Golden Gate and then split back off on HWY 1 to the Point Reyes, Bodega Bay, Sea Ranch, Mendocino and finally Fort Bragg. It was getting late but again we couldn’t find a single campsite or hotel room so we made the disappointing decision to ride another hour to the 101 and the town of Willits where we found one of the last vacant hotel rooms on the central coast. We were on the bikes for 11 hours this second day but only covered a little over 250 miles. We were happy to finally be parked and getting some food and a place to sleep.
Day 3: