This summer a motorcycle forum to which I subscribe announced a "return to Baker City ride". I had made a ride earlier this year that took me through Baker City and I knew that there was a lot of wonderful riding in that area with more great roads waiting for me to explore. I knew the people on this motorcycle forum only by the user names by which they posted and had never met any of them in person. I thought this would be a great opportunity to meet some of the people from this group and ride some more of the roads in this area. I booked a room in Baker City and marked the time as vacation at work.
I did some route planning using Google Maps and consulted with a friend that used to live in La Grande. I came up with a route that would take me from the Oregon coast along the Columbia River, mostly on the less traveled Washington side, then to the small town of Heppner for the night. From there I would ride a fairly small road to Ukiah and take one of two beautiful routes to Baker City, returning on the second route. At Baker City I would make a one day ride to the Hells Canyon Dam. The return trip would be two days exploring a more southern route with a night in Prineville.
The trip had perfect weather all 5 days. My Suzuki V-Strom 650 performed flawlessly. I used 25 gallons of fuel achieving 50 miles per gallon. I created trip reports for each day with some selected photos. Each trip report will link to the next if you wish to view them all. I also have a set of all photos taken. Here are the links.
Link to all photos taken here.
Link to June 2016 ride - Baker City, Oregon and Lewiston, Idaho