That is my unpopular opinion, but there it is. My husband and I believe this about all of inland Oregon and can’t believe motorcycle travelers going North to South or vice versa insist on doing the coast, thereby missing out on the incredible beautiful and wonderful roads of Oregon – especially Eastern Oregon. The only part of the entire west coast that is truly fabulous for motorcycle travel is south of Monterey, IMO.
We were reminded of this yet again when my husband got Juneteenth off and we decided to take that and the rest of the week to run around the John Day area.
The geography and roads of the area are absolutely spectacular. You will experience beautiful twisties and challenging inclines and declines, on pavement or on dirt, whatever you fancy, as well as ever-changing geography: sometimes tree covered, sometimes, empty with red and yellow hills, colored by the minerals in the dirt and rocks, sometimes fields of lava rocks, and always beautiful. The scenery, the empty roads, the lack of stoplights, the charming little towns – yeah, I’ll take this over the Oregon coast most anytime!
We were in this same area in 2012; back then, it was my first motorcycle camping trip on my KLR (I had switched from a 1983 Honda Nighthawk). In 2012, when we camped in tiny historic Antelope, Oregon, the cafe was open and still sported some reddish paint inside from the time it was run by the Rajneeshees, and the field next door – the campground – was covered in weeds, there were no picnic tables (so we used an old cable roller for a table and our panniers for chairs) and the campground “manager” was a guy living in a camping trailer with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag out front and who said he invented the Internet and that banks would fail next week. It also had a rundown but clean and working bathroom – painted red – which we were most grateful for.
Now: the campground field is a beautiful, well maintained, groomed lawn, still with its trees, and catering especially to bicycle travelers. A new bathhouse is being constructed, the grass is mowed and very green, and they’ve brought in Rajneeshee-built A-frames from the cult’s former compound, Rajneeshpuram, which is now a camp operated by Young Life (which is still kind of a cult, but I digress…) which are going to be FANTASTIC places to sleep – very Scandinavian in the vibe.
Shaniko looks way better than it did back in 2012: the hotel is open, they just had a big bluegrass festival, they have public bathrooms and you can camp in the field next to them (no shade and it’s really windy at night though – but it’s popular with bicyclists and motorcyclists, and there’s a little convenience store right there as well). We did panic at first when we got to “town”, seeing the Texaco station is long closed, but there is a 24 hours unstaffed gas station there.
I’d love to stay at the Shaniko Hotel soon. Its web site needs more info about if guests can gather in the lobby or if there is a parlor or meeting room – if there is, it would be a terrific place for a small retreat. We didn’t stay there though, because we were focused on camping this trip.
Oh-so-twisty 218 between Shaniko and Antelope was much for fun for me 12 years later: I’m a MUCH better rider than I was then. The next morning, we went from Antelope to Fossil, which I find charming. We were darn glad to find Brenda’s Blessings, a tiny little cafe, for breakfast (the restaurant in town isn’t open for breakfast) – we found it because a motorcycle was parked out front, and once we parked and went in, more showed up. Motorcycles parked out in front of your restaurant will always bring in more folks!
I would LOVE to stay at Wilson Ranches Retreat nearby and ride horses! Someday…
We went on through Spray and Monument and, eventually, to John Day, where we had camping reservations at Clyde Holliday State Recreation Site. The town was packed with motorcyclists, most of whom were going to the Chief Joseph BMW rally but there were a surprising number of riders who weren’t going – they were there for the roads.
The cottonwood was OUT OF CONTROL. Had to take a video. The bugs at the campground are also awful, and we had the worst site in the whole campground for tent campers: 14. But we had it for just one night, because when we booked, nothing was available two nights in a row, so we booked at the site across from it for the next night, and it was four thousand times better. It’s a nice campground, but you better bring all the bug spray you can.
We took some roads new to us: 20, from Bates State Park, where we met some other motorcyclists stopped for the view, and after a lovely lunch at Long Creek, we took 18, an easy gravel road that turns to pavement right at the entrance to Magone Lake Campground, which we checked out and I would definitely like to camp there someday. On one road, we passed Murderer’s Creek Guard Station, which we found out later you can rent. We had wanted to make it to Oregon Mine Campground, but I was ready to head back at the turnoff. All of this is worth looking up if you are in the area and looking for great places to ride and to camp cheaply – and to camp in SHADE. I just do NOT do open field camping anymore in the summer if I can avoid it. I am done with that phase of my life.
Several places were open range regarding cattle, and it’s a myth that deer are out only at sunrise and sunset – be careful out there.
We took some of US Highway 395. It goes from Laurier, Washington, right on the Canadian border, all the way to Hesperia, California. So much of it is scenic and worth driving, though there are some stretches in California that are straight and really boring and I hate it in Washington state. US 395 traverses the entire length of the Owens Valley in California and that is definitely worth doing. Most parts in Oregon are also terrific.
At some point one day, we passed Morrow County OHV Park, and since the cafe there was open and we were hungry, we stopped. This is a massive staging site for dirt bikes and four wheelers, and there is no shade for most of the camp sites. They do have cabins though.
On our way out of the area, we went to the Thomas Condon Paleontology and Visitor Center for the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, which is always worth a stop. Watch the film they show – it’s SO worth it. This is a working research center, and the paleontologists there are actively doing fossil science in the lab, which you can observe – we watched a woman carefully cleaning up a fossil with a tool that looked like what is used to clean my teeth at the dentist. There are more than 750 fossil sites within the John Day Basin. There are no dinosaurs in this area – this part of the country was beneath the Pacific Ocean at those times. The area has been highly volcanically active since then and the land was been built up out of the ocean during the Age of Mammals. Preserved within the assemblages of the John Day Basin is a fossil record that spans over 40 million years. No region in the world shows a more complete sequence of the animals andplants of this era than the John Day Basin. Seeing the representations of the mammals that inhabited this region millions of years ago is fascinating – at least it is to me. And the park rangers and paleontologists in the visitor’s center are SO happy to answer your questions!
We also stopped by the Twist & Shake Drive in Condon – Stefan somehow remembered it before we got there and looked for it.
From Condon, we took 206 to Cottonwood Canyon State Park. I was counting on the campground being full, so we could camp up by the visitor’s center in the overflow area, which is SO much better to camp in, as it’s got shade and it’s near bathrooms – the main campground is VERY far from the bathrooms. It was stupid hot and I was really looking forward to that cool grassy area. Well, a lot has changed in 12 years, namely that they no longer have overflow camping in that area: they’ve moved it midway between there and the main campground, in an open, totally exposed area, and good luck finding it – the signage is awful. There is NOT shade whatsoever here- there’s some sort of wooden structure that seems to be more about looking artistic than providing any real, meaningful shade.
It took forever to find someone who could help us know if we could camp in this spot or not – the camp host was nowhere to be found and the park ranger happened to be driving by and seemed quite annoyed at our questions. We eventually found a hand-pulled wagon and hauled our stuff from the bikes to the site- two trips in the scorching heat. The upside of these campsites, as opposed to the main campground, is that you are relatively near the bathrooms. So after unpacking, I changed into shorts and a t-shirt – didn’t care who saw – walked up to the bathrooms and showers building, went into a shower room, turned on the cold water, sat in the floor and just let the cold water cover my legs. I also got my hair wet. And I did this every 15 minutes for the next 90 minutes, I kid you not. When I would finish a wetting, I’d go sit on a bench in the shade between the bathrooms and showers and let the wind keep me cool for a few minutes. It was DANGEROUSLY hot. And we found out later that the site had NO running water just an hour before we arrived and it had been that way for hours. THAT IS DANGEROUS.
I really cannot recommend Cottonwood State Park unless you just have no other options to camp. It’s gorgeous, absolutely, but the heat is so oppressive. And that wind will take your tent and everything not tied down and whisk it away.
It didn’t cool down after dark as we had so hoped. We sat outside drinking the wine we brought with us, eating chips and salsa and talking to one of the other campers, a Canadian on a BMW with a sidecar, who had attended the Chief Joseph Rally in John Day. A cloud cover rolled in so we got robbed of what is really the only reason to camp there: a gorgeous, clear starry night.
Next day, we didn’t cook breakfast – we packed up quickly and headed out to get breakfast somewhere. Sadly, that place turned out to be McDonald’s in Bigg’s Junction, which had NO proper restaurants that we could find. We got onto Interstate 84, heading West, and I kept hoping the wind wouldn’t get any worse than it was – I HATE wind when I am riding my motorcycle, and I hate wind no matter what vehicle when I’m in the Columbia River Gorge.
We jumped off onto historic highway 30 when we could and, wow, what a great road! And we ended up at Rowena Crest Viewpoint, a site we had never heard of, and the view of the Gorge was stunning. WOW! Highway 30 ended for vehicle traffic at Mosier. Altogether, it was only about 17 miles, but it was absolutely worth it. We’d already done the section of historic 30 from Dodson to Corbett, including the Vista house, years ago, and on a Sunday, we did not want to deal with the hoards of people and traffic – not worth it.
All this, none too far from where we live in Oregon. This state is ridiculously beautiful. And you miss so much of it, most of it, if you stick to the coast.
Here are all of our photos from this amazing little adventure. And have a read for our We were in this same area in 2012.
One final note: I don’t think I ever saw another woman on another adventure motorcycle on this trip. And that made me sad.
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