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Eastern Oregon and Nevada Loop


keithu

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Last weekend I looped out through eastern Oregon and down to Ely, Nevada to meet up with some old friends. My track:

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It's 800 miles from my home to Ely, so I rolled out of the garage just after 2:00am. I chose gear based on 90-100F temps in the desert, not considering I'd hit freezing temps over Willamette Pass. Why would I? I've only been over this pass dozens of times and frozen my ass off every single time.

It warmed up quickly once the sun started to rise. I saw the ambient temp gauge on my FJ go from 32F to 82F in just a little over an hour. OR-31 was beautiful at sunrise. I expected a lot of smoke from the nearby Bootleg fire, but there just a few high whisps.

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I arrived in Ely around 2:45pm as planned. While topping up at a gas station some pirates came over to check out my aux fuel tank. "Looks like you're set up for long distance."

"Yep," I replied.

"It's no good for the highway though." 🤨

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On Saturday a small group of us rode up to Wheeler Peak in Great Basin NP. We started on what I thought would be a short hike, but ended up being three miles at 10,000' ASL. An Aerostich and Sidi boots aren't the ideal gear for such a thing, but it was a beautiful hike.

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Sunday morning I was on the road a bit after 5:00am for the 750 mile route home. I routed up through Fields, Oregon to enjoy a famous milkshake at Fields Station.

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Great pictures and story!  Thank you.

The comment about the smoke was helpful.  I'm headed over to the Baker City area in a couple weeks and one of my concerns was the smoke.  

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"It's no good for the highway though." 🤨

The pirates said that?  I guess they only go from their house to the nearest biker bar and back.  Range isn't an issue with that style of riding.

 

Chris

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Ah yes, the good old Four Sevens in Ely.  Have always stayed there over the years.  Can't beat the rates and the drink tokes for the Nevada Hotel.  The gal that used to work the front desk(Becky - now retired) always took great care of us.  Let us park under the roof cover and gave us a bucket and rags to swab down the bikes.  Hiking Wheeler in bike gear had to be fun.  Hell, you only live once.  Thanks for the report.

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On 7/31/2021 at 10:40 AM, daboo said:

The pirates said that?  I guess they only go from their house to the nearest biker bar and back.

Yes, I think they were referring to the style of bike. A lot of those folks can't conceive of the idea of traveling on anything smaller than a Road Glide or Wingabago. There's this belief that if you're not on a 900 pound parade float a gust of wind will carry you off to the land of Oz or something.

They were pretty incredulous when I told them I'd already ridden 800 miles that day.

Regarding smoke: conditions change all the time. Tripcheck.com has road cams around Oregon where you can see current conditions.

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The smoke hit us up north of Seattle last night.  It's better this morning.  

I made my reservations yesterday for a rally at Baker City over the Labor Day weekend.  Last summer, I was coming back from that rally when we hit high winds and dense smoke.  I had no idea the fires had started till I got home.

Chris

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