Longest Day Ride, Anyone?

[Greg Field]

The Solstice is coming up, and like any good pagan injun, I'm making plans for the celebration. I plan to celebrate this year by taking a Longest Day Ride. I'm hoping to find at least one other hard rider who is eager to do such a thing.

 

Here's the basics of the plan, so far: We ride from sunup to sundown and see how far we get. At Seattle's lattitude, that means from about 0400 to about 2200 hrs. That's about 18 hours of riding. At a 50-mph average, we could be either far away from Seattle, say Missoula, Montana, or far forth and back. It's not going to be just a marathon for miles, though. We'll be taking some top-quality roads.

 

Among them will be the best road I know of: The Spiral Highway, which is 10 miles of hairpins down the side of a hill outside Lewiston Idaho. We'll take a couple laps each way.

 

I wish I knew how to generate those maps, but I don't, so I'll just have to describe the route. To get there, we'll take about 90 miles of freeway to Vantage, Washington, and then take WA 26 eastward into the wheat country and a bunch of tiny, twisties down into the Snake River Canyon country. Then, US 12 east to Lewiston. After The Spiral Highway, we re-assess.

 

Do e want to continue up US 12 and over Lolo Pass? If so, do we want to overnight in Missoula and do it again the next day? Do we want to go over Lolo and come back down it that day and try to get back to Seattle? Do we want to go to Bovil, Idaho, to visit the Hartmans and kick back in their bar? Lots of possibilities.

 

Anybody want to go?