In the adventure motorcycle community its often said the main attraction is to “see where that road goes”, which is essentially the motto of every leisure activity that involves roads. Nonetheless, when you do a BDR you do in fact discover that some of these dirt roads go on for hours, often times in the middle of nowhere. The question that keeps popping up as you do these is “who the hell built these roads, who maintains them, and why?” But this is not really solvable as far as I can tell. 

But there is a larger problem with this ad hoc adventure motorcycle credo. You really don’t see where the road goes. What you really do is follow a pink line on a garmin, which is not like reading a map like adventurers of yore, but much more similar to playing snake on a Nokia phone. Today I went from Cashmere to Chelan, and while I have some clue where those town are on a map (central Washington) I have no idea how I arrived here. I just kept doing what the garmin said and at dinner I was one day closer to Canada. But then again, aren’t we all just following a pink line? (Cut to Carrie Bradshaw sitting cross leg on her bed closing her laptop )

Ok seriously. Today was pretty cool. I’m gonna say about 140 miles? Left Wenatchee at about 10 after some serious hotel-style dicking around, and arrived 8 hours later at what might be the best campsite ever about 20 miles out side of Chelan. It’s at the end of a tiny turnoff through some trees and dead-ends at a spectacular overlook besotted with wildflowers. As long as it doesn’t start gusting at 50 mph tonight this is one for the ages. 

The ride today was solid. Great views of the enchantments,  fun riding. The end of the ride included an optional harder section called “the jungle” (cue guns and roses) which turned out to be harder than anything I have done before on a bdr. I also did it backwards because I did not see the start on the garmin. This made it a very very technical climb that involved plowing through brush and being very close to the edge of some rather large drop offs. I actually had to stop for a sec to collect my thoughts. But the DR650 can do. 

The result of bulk food and some planning. my total garbage for one day: Foil at the top, compostable bags at the bottom and one plastic wrapper.