A Return to Brewery Gulch

My first trip to Mendocino was in 1976 as a hitch hiker in the back of an old Cadillac. Through the darkness of night, I was being driven across the mountains to the coast by an seriously intoxicated fellow trying to flick his lit Chesterfield into an ever-moving ashtray. Mendocino was the first place he stopped the car enough that I could escape. It was very good roll out my sleeping bag that night on the side of the river in Mendocino’s Brewery Gulch. The place has been sacred to me ever since.

Typical gas stop

Arky, Francesca & staff

The very beginning of apple pressing season

This, my third visit, was special because one of my wife’s favorite cousins happens to have a farm overlooking the ocean in Mendocino and it happens to be the site of the 1900’s Mendocino Brewery and the original Brewery Gulch Inn.  Cousin Arky is a sort of renaissance man—a former emergency physician, writer and inn keeper, a business consultant, sawmill operator, purveyor of reclaimed old-growth redwood, organic meat farmer, and orchard-keeper.  Having built a highly regarded new inn from redwood logs he dredged out of the Big River near Russian Gulch, he then sold the operation after many years and moved from the garage into the old house. He and his wife, Francesca, continue to live in the original Brewery Gulch farmhouse with several feral cats,  a big yellow-eyed dog, and Homer, the ghost of the original owner. Homer's portrait, sitting on a horse rolling a cigarette, graces the paneled dining room wall. For two wonderful nights, I ate the cooking of a gourmet chef—their own beef and chicken--  and sipped wine much better than anything I would know to buy back home. I really didn’t have a choice. I was in Mendocino County, home of the world’s finest zinfandel.

I had picked up the Shore Highway, California Hwy 1, (also known as the Pacific Coast Highway) at its northern beginning near Leggett and was now closely following the high bluffs above the Pacific. At times it was sunny and warm, then around a curve and it was socked in with fog and downright cold.  This was my route south to San Francisco and it has to be one of the great motorcycle roads in the world. The occasional small village along the way beckoned with a shabby-chic chowder house, wine-tasting parlor, or general store pumping regular gas at $5.00 per gallon. 

The Terror of Highway 101

At Crescent City, CA I picked up US 101, the old Spanish Camino Real. This road, connecting Canada to the north with Mexico to the south, wends its way into the redwoods and becomes the spine of California.  The bike was running flawlessly, as I heard these liquid-cooled BMWs do. Its total lack of vibration and its smooth acceleration up the twisting hills, seduced me. I was on the Starship Enterprise, or at least some sort of decadent Buick convertible from days gone by. Each time I passed the timeless shield signifying US 101, a tune from my childhood echoed through my head.  I had to change the words to suit me, with all apologies to Vaughn Monroe, the Cheers, and the Diamonds.

He wore black ballistic trousers and motorcycle boots

And a red armored jacket with a Beemer on the back.

He rode a hopped up ‘cicle that shot off like a gun,

And he was the terror of Highway 101.

I was probably six years old when this Lieber & Stoller hit played on AM radio, but it has stayed with me over the years. Right up there with Good Night Irene and Eddie Fisher’s version of Oh, My Papa. Call it the sentimentality of old age. For the hopelessly curious, the Lieber & Stoller lyrics are here and a version of the song is here.

It’s hard to describe the sensation of riding down the northern California coast, in and out of the fog, and then curving inland through forests of giant redwood trees. Here, it’s sunny and mild as one zips by a farmstead, and then suddenly cold and densely humid as one plunges  into the micro-climate of these enormous living things.

North of Humboldt Redwoods State Park I was able to pick-up “Old Hwy 101” which is known as the “Avenue of the Giants.”  It took me quite a while to get through as I was stopping frequently and walking into the woods. The trees are as big around as a truck and stand over 300 feet tall. In an area known as Founders Grove, commemorating the early 20^th Century visionaries who saved tracts of old growth Sequoia and Coastal Redwood forest from the lumbermen’s axes, lies the Dyerville Giant. This tree had been thought to be the tallest living thing on earth, taller than the Statue of Liberty or a 30-story building. It measured 362 ft in height and 52 feet in circumference. It was felled in a storm in 1991 and apparently the crash was picked-up by seismographs across California. Take a look:  http://redwoods.info/showrecord.asp?id=1710

Standing beside a fallen redwood

Avenue of the Giants

I set up camp at Myers Flats on the east bank of the Eel River and used some charcoal leftover from one of Jim’s feasts to grill a bit of dinner. With a couple bottles of local craft brew and Carol’s “iPod speakers” hooked up to the satellite radio, I spent a pleasant evening listening to Il Travatorre on the Metropolitan Opera station and giving motorcyclists a bad name. I guess it’s all a part of riding a BMW.

Campground music

Huckleberry Pie

Life seems to flow in chapters, at least mine does. And from each chapter, there emerge one or two people with whom one seems to have a connection that transcends the job, the place, the interest or the activity that originally brought you together. You may not have frequent or even regular contact with these persons, but they are always there, in the background, an important piece in an "era" in your life that might seem quite distant from your current pursuit. A person like this for the "first Battle Creek" era in my life was Mike O'Malley. 

I had moved to Michigan in 1991 and took a position with the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop a residential vocational rehabilitation program that combined community housing with work for pay within the context of a therapeutic environment.  Mike lived in Seattle and was writing the book on this approach. He instilled into my thinking a paradigm that made my program's subsequent success possible. Over the years, I've only seen Mike a few times-- primarily at national meetings far from home and once when he stayed with us in Michigan while doing an national accreditation survey of a nearby facility. Mike and his wife Debbie now live in Eagle Point, OR, a small town on the banks of the Rogue River and a couple of hours down the highway from Crater Lake. Both the O'Malleys and Crater Lake were on my list and when I realized the geographic coincidence, a stopover was arranged.

Having decided the mountains of eastern Washington held bad ju-ju for me, I chose to leave Olympia and that fair state by way of Interstate 5 due south. With my satellite radio tuned in to the Metropolitan Opera, I began my ride on what motorcyclists refer to as "the slab."  Once past Eugene, OR however, I-5 becomes an entirely pleasant experience, wending its way through the coastal hills of eastern Oregon with broad sweeping curves and glorious views of Oregon farms and ranch land. At Grants Pass, I cut east to Eagle Point where I was warmly welcomed by Mike and his wife. The following day, I headed for Crater Lake which is one of those places kids growing up in the east see pictures of but rarely get to experience. It's up there with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the presidential heads in South Dakota.

Oregon ranch house

The best huckleberry pie

Oregon Highway 62 climbs through prototypical Oregon evergreen forest, occasional crossing a ridge with vistas of high grass valleys and mountains on the horizon. Debbie had directed me to stop at Beckie's Cafe about half-way up and try their  huckleberry pie. I did. It was better than the huckleberry pie I had in St. Mary, MT. I followed it with a piece of marionberry pie. This is not a pie named after Washington, D.C.'s former mayor and national embarrassment. Marionberries are a kind of blackberry. But huckleberries are something else again. Now if you are not from a very limited area in the Rockies, you have probably never had a fresh huckleberry. The link above should tell you more than you want to know, but be assured the flavor is intense and sweetly explosive. It's also a favorite of grizzlies in the Rockies so there are certain risks associated with random huckleberry hunting.  Those are not cow patties in the berry patch!

Attention to staying in one's lane is amply rewarded

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States, almost 2,000 ft. (700 m.) at its deepest point. A massive volcanic eruption  more than 7,000 years ago left a big hole where the top of the mountain had stood. Over the centuries, rain and snow melt filled the crater with water. Although less than 2% of the lake bottom has been explored, research has discovered hydrothermal pools that indicate a heat source at the bottom of the lake.  

A perimeter road winds itself around Crater Lake yielding numerous dramatic viewpoints and trail-heads where I was able to get off of the motorcycle and spend some time in the woods. The azure blue of the water is legendary and Wizard Island, looking like a volcanic cone, juts up out of the water at one side. Native American oral tradition "recalls" the eruption and the area remains a prominent ritual site for tribes in the area. In fact, private ceremonial activities, including vision quests, take place at Crater Lake today as they have for centuries. Like my stay at the remote Mayan ruins of Uaxactun last March, my first visit to Crater Lake will never be forgotten.

Check out this aerial view. Hope to post some photos soon!

Crater Lake, Oregon

Oregon's broad landscape

There Really ARE Angels

 



Having packed a few extra items, Jim was ready for almost anything

Jim was a relative novice to motorcycling, not having ridden since his wayward youth as a ship's carpenter in Florida. After buying his R100RT BMW, he completed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation riders' course, got his license, and rode daily "to get into shape." He had covered


Years as a rigger were not wasted

the 600+ miles from Virginia to Michigan in one long day. Three thousand miles later, he certainly had as much seat time as the average "ride to the cafe" city biker. But, there's always the dragon to bite you, and the dragon has a tail.

On a tightly climbing forest road heading around the east side of Mt. St. Helens, Jim swung a bit wide and slid off the edge of the pavement. As I backtracked to find him, I came across the once pristine R100 on its side, wedged into the soft earth and Jim with his left shoulder hunched over, obviously in pain. I had been there myself, more than once, yet I felt nauseous as I pulled off my gloves and helmet and realized I had little experience responding to a roadside crisis. There was no cell coverage but a passing car informed the National Forest Police. Soon Officer Ron Malamphy had his red and blue lights flashing and the EMT's were summoned. He made Jim sit down and stop jabbering about riding his motorcycle back to town. I'm sure the badge and the Glock on his belt helped, but he may have been the first angel.

When the ambulance arrived, the medic in charge climbed out revealing a prosthesis on one leg and a cast on the other. Jim's first words were "What the heck happened to you?!"  Nevertheless, the responder went right to work and then said, "They cut off my foot. I could lay around and watch TV or I could get on with my life. I chose to get on with it." He may have been the second angel.

Jim was immobilized and taken to the ER in Morton, WA, about 25 miles away. With the help of Randle, WA fire chief, Jeff Jacques, I righted Jim's bike and rode it down the mountain to the fire station where Jeff assured me we could leave it locked up for several days if necessary. He gave me his personal cell number and said to call any time and he would bring us Jim's gear. He then shuttled me back up the mountain to get my motorcycle and I headed off to check on Jimmy. Jeff an angel?  Maybe.

Jim was released from the Emergency Department at Morton Community Hospital a couple of hours later with a broken collar bone, a sling to hold his shoulder in place, and a half-dozen Dilaudid. But Morton's two motels were both full and the nearest vacant rooms I could find were in Packwood, about 40 miles to the east. The town of Morton has its own traffic light but no cabs, rental cars, airport limos, or shuttle buses. Looking out at my loaded motorcycle with all my camping gear on the passenger seat, and then back at Jimmy still obviously in pain with his arm wrapped tight, I suspected we were on the verge of a transportation dilemma.  Time for another angel. Nina, the ER receptionist, was married to Morton's Chief of Police and she said if we waited for him to get back into town, he would drive us the 40 miles to Packwood.  When I explained our situation over the phone to our third angel, Fire Chief Jeff, he said he would make a couple of calls and find us a place to stay. Within an hour, he was at the ER. He had all of Jim's gear, had gotten us a room that night at the Randle Motel where the sign had read "No Vacancy," and was there to drive us the 17 miles back.

The Randle Motel is one of those "mom-and-pop" establishments occasionally still found on the side of 2-lane byways in America. It had a broken down pick-up camper in the yard, a shack with a variety of ham radio antennas protruding from the roof, and an old Ron Paul campaign sign leaning against a chain link fence. Like almost everyone else in Randle, WA, the owner, Frank, was an EMT and volunteer fire fighter and he lived behind the motel with his wife and two obese bulldogs, Baby and Thomas. He suggested we go across the road to Randle's only saloon, the Big Bottom, and get a sandwich and a shot of Jim Beam to "take off the edge." We had become accustomed to doing as we were told, and immediately went across the street.

Frank's place, an obvious gem dating from the 1950's, was spotlessly clean though a bit uncoordinated in its decor. It had wi-fi and a small TV in the corner. He said we could stay the entire next day but could not sleep there because he had a crew of Christmas bough cutters moving in for 10 weeks to cut branches for the "wreath trade." No problem. Fire Chief Jeff had arranged a room at another motel two miles down the road. I slept. Jim tried.

The next day's inquiries led me to a nearby locksmith who had just taken on a U-Haul franchise. Being a locksmith, he answered his cell phone around the clock. He was quite certain he could get us a 10-foot box truck by Monday morning. In the meantime, I decided to dig into the resource of last resort: The "Anonymous Book" of the BMW Motorcycle Owners Association. This little volume lists the first names and phone numbers of people organized by state and town who are willing to help out in various ways should you find yourself with a roadside problem, like a broken collar bone. 

Call number three reached the cell phone of Carol, angel #5. She lived near Olympia, about 90 miles from Randle, but was at a BMW motorcycle club camp-out on an island in northern Puget Sound. Not a problem, she assured me. She would be home by noon, would check with others in the group for a trailer, and be down to pick us up by the end of the day on Sunday. Beginning to feel a bit more secure, Jim and I walked to the grocery store to pick up some lunch.

Now Randle is a small place. In addition to a motel, it has a diner, a bar, a grocery, a tax preparation office, and a gas station/beer store where the forest road splits off of Highway 12. Most people in town seem to carry two-way radios tuned into the fire/EMT frequency. We had become a know entity in Randle-- the latest motorcycle victims of Forest Road 23. This meant that people greeted us, asked how Jim was doing and wished us well wherever we went-- the diner, the bar, the grocery. We didn't try the Randle Bible Church, but I'm sure they too would have been kind, concerned and hospitable. Quite an experience.

Angel No. 5

About the time I figured Jim could no longer pack and repack his stuff on the picnic table in front of the Randle Motel, Carol's 4-wheel-drive Toyota pulled in with a little trailer in tow. She greeted us like old friends and acted as though this was just another Sunday diversion. We learned she was a former climber, former sailboat racer, and former married woman, who now lived with three cats, five motorcycles, and 173 stuffed animals of various shapes and breeds. She had been up the Dawson Highway in the Yukon on a motorcycle and had roped-towed out a motorcyclist with a chest-full of broken ribs. In her quiet hours, she worked for the state as a hydro-geologist and she seemed to view the entire "Mt. St Helens rescue operation" as just another adventure in a life full of surprises and friends you have yet to meet.

Carol's "family room"

Once settled into Carol's comfortable house, I set to work arranging Jim's return to Virginia. A saved business card in my wallet led me to Federal Warehouse Co., an outfit that palletized and shipped motorcycles around the country. Some boxes from Carol's garage soon held all of Jim's gear, save the most valuable or necessary. Southwest Airlines flies from Seattle-Tacoma to Washington, D.C. and Mastercard was all it took to ticket a flight. By 1:00 PM Monday, motorcycle pick-up was scheduled from Carol's the following week, FedEx had Jim's boxes in the hopper, and the man himself was at the airport ready to explain to the TSA why he was flying cross-country with an insulated cooler holding nothing  but a toothbrush, a camera and a computer. Good thing he lost his new doo-rag. It just would have been the wrong "look" for the guardians of our national security.



Starbucks City

Alaskan Way, downtown Seattle
 

It had been a long time since anyone in Seattle had seen clouds, mist or fog. The entire continent had been in a drought, the Northwest included. Two of the three times I have been in Seattle it has been warm, clear and sunny. And it started that way for two old guys on two old bikes. The morning we decided to "tour" the capital of Puget Sound welcomed us with drizzle and temps in the 50's. I guess we really were in Seattle afterall.


South Sound BMW



Troll living under the Rte 99 bridge, Seattle
(actual VW Beetle)

The Seattle Space Needle, 50 years old
 




They had no Chesapeake oysters at Pike St. Market

 


Bob's Hawaiian Coconut Lounge

There are two wonderful "secondary" roads running across northern Washington State for someone wanting to avoid the interstate on a trip to Seattle. State Route 20 looks more enticing, but we decided to stay on US 2 in the service of completing our chosen task. The passes through the Cascade Mountains behind Mt. Rainier are not as dramatic as the Continental Divide in the Rockies, but they offer great long sweeping curves and excellent road surface that makes motorcycle travel a joy. Finding the terminal point of US Rte. 2 was a bit anticlimatic however.

 

Rte 2 enters the greater Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area east of Everett, WA through the typical jungle of McDonald's, Target, Appleby's, Walmart, and Shell. As it passes under Interstate 5, its signage seems to disappear and it becomes Hewett St., on of downtown Everett's main east-west thoroughfares. At the end of Hewitt are the commercial docks and facilities of a major Pacific port, the longshoreman's union hall, and Bobby's Hawaiian Style Restaurant & Coconut Lounge. We had arrived. 2,727 miles from Chelsea...another 600+ miles for Uncle Jimmy... And this was it.

Western end of US Rte 2, Everett, WA

 

A couple of nights in Seattle, bikes serviced at RideWest BMW, outstanding seafood, and the hospitality of new friends Randy & Alison made the visit good. Soon to be off for Mt. St. Helens, sight of the catastrophic volcanic eruption in 1980. One of 160 active volcanoes in the "Pacific Rim of Fire," its eruption was the most economically devastating and deadliest in the history of the United States.



Mt. St. Helens before 1980

...after 1980

Our route was to take us along the back side up to Spirit Lake

Going to the Sun Road

One of the legendary motorcycle roads of North America is the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park. And they say BMW is the "legendary motorcycle of Germany." See the connection?   We just had to go...so we did.

 

Glacier is the U.S. portion of a much larger piece of protected wilderness, the Waterton-Glacier National Peace Park, a World Heritage Site. The park represents a vision international cooperation and hope. After all, Canada and the U.S. have been at peace since they whooped us in the Canadian version of the War of 1812.

Glacier is wild.There are a lot of bears, wolves, lynx,  trumpeter swans and other animals eradicated from many other parts of North America. Okay. So, there are bears and wolves in Michigan, but how about the long-toed salamander?

Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed in 1932, and it is the only road that crosses the park, going over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. A fleet of 1930s red tour buses called "jammers", rebuilt in 2001 to run on propane or gas, offer tours on the road. The road, a National Historic and Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, spans 53 miles (85 km) across the width of the the park.

The road is one of the most difficult roads to keep plowed of snow in North America in the spring. Up to 80 feet (24 m) of snow can lie on top of Logan Pass, and more just east of the pass where the deepest snowfield has long been referred to as "Big Drift." The road takes about ten weeks to plow, even with equipment that can move 4000 tons of snow in an hour. The snowplow crew can clear as little as 500 feet (150 m) of the road per day. On the east side of the continental divide, there are few guardrails due to heavy snows and the resultant late winter avalanches that have repeatedly 

Jim waiting our turn, Going to the Sun Road closure

destroyed every protective barrier ever constructed. The road was scheduled to close on Monday, September 17th at 6 AM. We crossed it on Sunday the 16th and descended the western slope of the Rockies to Kalispell, MT where we visited with Jim's niece and her family and took a well-deserved respite in a luxurious hotel.

Glacier National Park
 


The Flathead River valley was a warm and sunny relief from the frost we had encountered in the mountains. A brief visit with


Western slope of the Rockies

friends Mike and Susan Blair gave us a chance to absorb some of the grandeur of alpine mountains on two horizons-- for the sunrise as well as the sunset, a wandering river at times visited by elk and grizzlies, and a 40-mile long lake just to the south.

Flathead River from Mike & Susan Blair's deck, outside Big Fork, MT



View from Mike Blair's Bug-Eye Sprite
parked in his home workshop



Susan Blair's greenhouse of rare succulents



Downtown Spokane, WA





Washington camping, Banks Lake, formed by the Grand Coulee Dam

Stayin' on Rte 2

Route 2 west took us through the tidy city of Spokane and then many miles of wheat, high desert range land, and lush irrigated fruit orchards. Our lunch stop was a factory tour of the small 
enterprise that has been making "Applets" and "Cotlets", sweet fruit confections that are my mother-in-law's favorite. Of course, a box was shipped home. Off to the Cascade Mountains, the termination of Route 2 at the Puget Sound docks of Everett, WA, and Seattle for seafood and a splurge meal.


1,902 Miles to a Curvy Road

Eastern Montana can be pretty flat. Towns usually get established where there is a source of water. Here you get to descend into a steep gulch, cross some sort of bridge and then climb back up into the high desert. Jim will remember the little town of Glasgow. The town saloon has an airplane stuck in its mens room wall.

Entering Glasgow, MT

Big Sky Country

After a couple of hours of scorching across the range land at about 80 mph, Jim discovered that a headwind will substantially lower one's gas mileage. As he slowed onto the shoulder and put on his flashers, I suspected we might be in for a siphoning session. Just then, the road began a very gradual descent. Slowly creeping at about 15 mph, Jim coasted until Glasgow, MT came into view. And little by little, just as the road evened out in town, a Conoco station appeared and he rolled up to the pump. We suspect the airplane in the bar did not make it all the way to town.

BMW K75RT in Montana

At 1,902 miles from Chelsea, we reached Browning, MT and the first real curve in the road. Smoke from the Idaho fires obscured the long-range views and we could smell it while riding. We were entering the foothills of the northern Rockies and were soon in St. Mary, MT where we camped near the river that flows through the eastern part of Glacier National Park. We had oatmeal pancakes with huckleberry syrup, boysenberry pie and frost in the morning. I had a small leak from my final drive drain plug, probably caused by a re-used crush washer. So far, the very first thing even resembling a problem with this bullet-proof K75 RT BMW motorcycle.

There is really only one road through Glacier National Park but somehow we managed to miss it and end up crossing the border into Canada by mistake. Some friendly fast-talk got us back "home" and we began our climb up the Going to the Sun Road, one of North America's premier motorcycle routes. We had pushed all the way across the plains in order to get here before the road closed for construction and maintenance on September 17th. Now the fun could start!

Sunset, eastern slope of the Rockies



St. Mary River, western Montana