Tim and Dale, congratulations!

Tim's Trip Report

I left Kent a little before 4 AM with the intention of completing an Iron Butt Association Saddle Sore 1000 on my new-ish to me 1994 Kawasaki KLR 250.

The planned route was to slab it up to Arlington to get a good gauge on whether or not I could put in the miles on this little bike. That worked out okay so we, (a buddy of mine, Dale, rode along on his 650 V-Strom), headed east on WA-530 to Rockport. Turning east onto WA-20, we soon arrived at my first gas stop in Marblemount.

From there, we continued east, over the North cascades Highway. Dale had never ridden over Hwy. 20 so it was a real treat to be able to share this with him. The little KLR did an admirable job of negotiating the sometimes extreme elevation changes that this stretch of road offers. I had replaced the front sprocket with one that had an extra tooth just for this ride and that allowed its diminutive motor to cruise at an honest 65 mph at 7,000 rpm. That is, as long as the road was level. Unfortunately, the poor thing couldn't maintain quite that speed once we started climbing, (2000 feet in 8 miles). But, I could shift down to 5th and keep a steady 55 mph for these short segments and the bike and I were happy.

The next gas stop was Pateros, then Othello. The nice thing about a trip of this length on such a small bike is that the 2.5 gallon gas tank ensured plenty of stops. From Othello, we headed across on WA-24, skirting the Hanford Reservation towards Yakima. We had to endure a couple of miles of I-82 before exiting onto US-12 and riding over White Pass. This was another planned gas stop and we took advantage of the opportunity to re-install our jacket liners and switch to winter gloves for the expected colder climes to the west.

WRONG! The weather was just as beautiful on the west side as on the east. So we roasted all the way to Raymond, the next planned stop. In Raymond, we shed the liners and switched back to the summer gloves. As my luck would have it, by the time we got 25 miles north of Raymond, heading for Forks, the weather turned cold and it started misting. So, for about 300 miles, we were in completely the wrong gear for our conditions. Hey, if this was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

I had promised Dale that we'd stop in Forks for a Sully's burger if we were on or ahead of schedule and that is exactly what we did. Mmmm. It was extra tasty towards the end of a day that saw me eating only a couple of cereal bars and a banana up to that point.



The next planned stop was Clallam Bay. I had planned this because I wanted to take the northern route to Port Angeles - WA-113 and WA-112, rather than staying on US-101. Unfortunately, the Shell station in Clallam Bay does not have pay-at-the-pump and the station was closed. Doh! Then we found out it is the same story in Joyce. Now, we've ridden and extra 20 or so miles that I can't document. This is fine because the 101 route is long enough but I wouldn't have ridden so far out of my way if I'd known it wouldn't have counted for anything. It is certainly a good thing that I had extra fuel along for just such a case.

So, Port Angeles was our first and only un-planned gas stop. From there, it was a dark ride on newly paved US-101 to Skokomish and one last fill up before heading back to the station we started from.

The final tally:
1062 miles on the bike's odometer
1041 GPS miles - after subtracting the un-documentable miles to Clallum Bay
Less than 100 on Interstates
22 hours and 4 minutes

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