I was studying the calendar a few weeks ago, whereupon I realized that Father’s Day was just a turn of the page away. As I had not seen my favorite daughter for several months, a visit to coincide with the one day of the year when I could claim the center of attention suggested itself immediately.

My trip plan eventually became traveling on the Yamaha, with a night there and back sleeping in my tent. With the bike pointed in the general direction of California and a gust of wind trying to drag rain from a cloudy sky, I left home with Crater Lake National Park in mind as my destination for the first night. It had snowed there overnight, with another inch of snow forecast for this night, so I expected to be using Crater Lake only as a landmark in the general vicinity of wherever I would shove the kickstand into the dirt at the end of the day.

U.S. Route 97 south was my means of staying off Interstate 5, which, while a fine highway, is a boring way to exit Washington State, and I knew I would likely spend time on the interstate on my return home. Putting the tires on the 97 also provided a good excuse to make sure the ride through Yakima River Canyon on State Route 821 was still worthwhile (it was). I stopped for a late lunch at Sodbusters in Goldendale. I had taken note of the restaurant a few times while gassing up the bike nearby on previous trips, but never at a time a meal was on the schedule. Very enjoyable. The service and food were just what I needed to send me on my way feeling happy with my choice.

Goldendale is home to Goldendale Observatory State Park. The observatory was created to house one of the largest amateur‐built telescopes of its day, and the telescope continues to be one of the largest public telescopes in the world.

Not far down the road after lunch, I stopped at Maryhill Stonehenge to take a photo. The site is a monument to members of the U.S. Armed Forces from Klickitat County who died during The Great War.

The man who caused the monument to be built was Samuel Hill (May 13, 1857 – February 26, 1931). Hill’s biography is remarkable and worth studying by anyone interested in the people who influenced development in Washington State in the early decades of the twentieth century. (Of note is that he is not the Sam Hill referred to when people ask, What in the Sam Hill?¹)

The ride through central Oregon in the north part of the state brought to mind many similar stretches of road through rural America, where one community appears to be thriving while another twenty miles further on makes manifest that not every small town is destined to prosper. In Grass Valley, for example, a large U.S. flag in good condition flying atop a pole at N.E. Church Street made poignant the scene of virtually every business of the several lining the highway featuring a Closed sign in its window. On a Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon. Many of the buildings appeared to have been abandoned and left to decay.

I made a stop at Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint to get a look at the Crooked River High Bridge. When it was completed in 1926, the bridge, at 464 feet long and 295 feet above the river, was the highest single‐arch span in the United States. I did not have time to hike into the canyon to get a better perspective for a photo, so I am able to offer only a description of the chasm beneath the bridge as a long way to the bottom.

James Loewen helped transform my innate skepticism about roadside historical markers into outright hostility. Curious about the namesake of this wide spot in the road, I have decided from the reading I have done that Peter Ogden was an odious human being, which makes his approbation by the state entirely unremarkable in this part of the country. Ogden seems to have been everywhere during the expansion of the fur trade into the western North American continent, and he entered the Crooked River Valley in 1825 while leading an expedition for the Hudson’s Bay Company on the first recorded Euro–American journey into central Oregon, which is how his name comes to be celebrated locally.

South of Bend, the weather that had been on the horizon all afternoon finally stopped retreating into the mountains, got up on its haunches, and furiously attacked the landscape with rain. The Yamaha has a nifty little switch on the handlebar that I can use to raise the windscreen, and with the windscreen fully extended I stayed reasonably dry despite riding at speed through a downpour. After passing numerous patches of snow that the spring thaw had not yet dealt with, and with Crater Lake hovering at the fringes of the screen on my Garmin, I found a sucker hole in the weather in Crescent and pulled off to take a look at the map. It was time to figure out a stopping point for the day. Here is that interior monologue: It’s forty‐two degrees and pouring rain. NOAA says it’s supposed to be in the thirties overnight in this part of the state. And I plan to sleep in a tent? In the cold mud? I’m too old for that shit.

I rode out from under the rain as I approached Upper Lake Klamath and into Klamath Falls just as the sun set. After making arrangements for a down‐filled pillow at a local hostelry, I found a place that served a hot meal and was ready to call it a day. As I passed through the lobby en route to my room, the front desk clerk pointed out the warm chocolate chip cookies set out in the lobby for guests to enjoy with a glass of milk. Warm chocolate chip cookies are not served in my tent. I discovered that, after humping a motorcycle for 518 miles, a warm chocolate chip cookie was just what I needed.

The following morning was overcast but not unpleasant. I had in mind a route through the Cascade Range in northern California that I had wanted to explore for many years, and set off to find it. It took a bit of zooming around on my Garmin when I reached Macdoel in California, but find it I did.

Forest Service Road 15 skirts Lava Beds National Monument and the Medicine Lake volcano, the largest volcano by volume in the Cascade Range. The area attracts snowmobilers,² but my interest was in seeing a part of the state I had not previously visited. The road was a two‐lane affair that meandered its way into the hills and sufficiently twisty to scrub some of the grime off of the sidewalls of the tires. The landscape offered views for several miles until finally climbing into the trees, which clung to a fog that hovered overhead. I stopped for a few minutes to listen to the quiet and to be grateful for the solitude. As the road continued up, the fog escaped the grasp of the trees and descended to the ground, where it was thick and wet and had my undivided attention for the few miles needed to roll off of the hill. The road is not a part of what is known as the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway, which is a route I have covered in pieces over time. The Byway map does indicate the southern portion of FS–15 as an alternative link between the Lava Beds monument and Bartle, but I am sure other roads are identified as the favored route because FS–15 cannot be driven while using cruise control. Better for me this day, as I encountered only a single vehicle in an hour of riding between Macloud and Bartle.

Much as having to return home from vacation on a commercial flight is a sure way to kill any lingering relaxation from having taken said vacation, turning onto Highway 89 and heading toward Lassen Volcanic National Park killed whatever ambition I may have harbored to spend the morning reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the passage along FS–15. Every chucklehead with an RV was in front of me, except for those who were coming from the opposite direction. Resigned to studying the license plate of the Fleetwood motor coach in front of me for a while, I decided I was not going to have time to cruise the shore of Lake Almanor as I had plans for dinner with my daughter. The consolation was I would be using Highway 32 as my exit ramp into the Sacramento Valley.

Highway 32 aligns with the southern boundary of the Big Chico Creek watershed, which defines the separation of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges in this portion of their geography, and, as with any two‐lane highway that wants to follow the water, this one has to corkscrew its way over the terrain. I have driven this stretch of the 32 often over decades, and it never ceases to be a hoot. Today was no exception. It was as the road popped up to the top of the ridge overlooking the Valley that big, fat rain drops began clattering on my helmet. By the time I was southbound on Highway 99, it was pouring rain.

When she was a young girl, my daughter and I spent a weekend camping and fishing just outside Lassen Park, and Highway 32 was how we got in and out of the mountains. To this moment, thinking about that weekend makes me a little misty‐eyed — it was such a good time. As I type this, I am looking at the framed photo of her I took that weekend as she held her fishing pole and turned to me to ask, Dad, where are all the fish?

After 386 miles out of Oregon and into northern California, I ended the day with a hug from my daughter, which is the best way to end any day.

The following day was Saturday, which was a beautiful, warm, sunny day we spent in the Napa Valley. After sightseeing, marveling at the mansions on the hills, and turning around at St. Helena, it was necessary to make a stop at the Mondavi Winery. The Mondavi family has been very generous to UC Davis, and it seemed appropriate to leave a little cash in their till as long as we were in their neighborhood. Satisfied with operations at Mondavi, we had lunch at Bistro Don Giovanni, where I chose the BLT Pizza. Who knew that BLT Pizza was something missing from my life? My gosh, it was good.

Of all things, I had forgotten to pack my tennis shoes, so after lunch I had occasion to demonstrate my historical technique for buying shoes to my daughter. I am not sure she appreciated the nuances of the technique, but she was at least patient enough to wait while I solved the problem. We closed out the afternoon wandering around downtown Napa and had an appetizer and dessert al fresco for dinner at Basalt, which sits on the promenade along the Napa River. Bed time was early, as we had to be up before the sun on Father’s Day.

Neither of us had ever taken a ride in a hot air balloon, and at four o’clock Sunday morning, we were ready to correct that. A brilliant full moon was a fitting harbinger of the perfectly blue skies that followed.

I will spoil the ending by stating that we were ready to do it again as soon as we were done. Aloft, we could see the Bay Bridge and San Francisco skyline thirty miles to the south. The pilot observed that perhaps only three or four days a year did the weather allow such a distant view. It was spectacular.

The gas burners kept the air in the basket comfortably warm, and because the balloon moved with the breeze, there was no apparent wind. It just … floated along quietly. In the hour or so we were in the air, we covered just over five miles on the ground. It was a virtual magic carpet ride, and my daughter and I are not sure whether we will find an experience to surpass it.

After returning to Earth in both a literal and figurative sense, it was time to meander toward home. There was a nap involved after that, before dinner at Centro Cocina Mexicana in Sacramento. The changes since the 1980s in the neighborhood where that restaurant is situated started me waxing nostalgic about my old haunts, which prompted my daughter to reveal one of her own nearby at Shady Lady. The burgundy velvet wallpaper made me feel right at home, but there was nothing about it that was better than watching as she sipped some gin‐based concoction while I grinned like the Cheshire Cat, thinking about just how fine a Father’s Day it had been.

Monday was going to be blistering hot in the Valley, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was on the road for home shortly after six o’clock and headed for the coast and cool air. I had not been on Highway 16 westbound out of Woodland for over thirty years, and it is such a pretty way of getting into the Coast Range surrounding Clear Lake — which is perhaps the oldest lake in North America — so that was my path to the Pacific: follow Cache Creek to Clear Lake, then Highway 20 past Clear Lake, and on to Fort Bragg.

Just about the time the temperature in Sacramento was nearing that at the surface of the Sun, I arrived in Fort Bragg, where it was 66° under a cloudless sky. Perfect. Starbucks was happy to sell me a latté and muffin for a late breakfast, and that was fuel enough to get me out of California. I had a thoroughly enjoyable trip up the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping to take a picture, but otherwise just tossing the bike around and marveling at how fortunate I was to be riding a motorcycle in that place, with that weather, having spent the weekend with my girl, wearing a t‐shirt she once gave me stenciled with lettering that reads, Life is good.

I had in mind pitching my tent at Harris Beach State Park in Brookings, Oregon, for the night. I arrived at the park shortly after five o’clock and had to sit in a line of like‐minded folks backed up at the gate. I was fortunate to get the last of the tent spots available. My brother John and I had eaten at La Flor de Mexico in Brookings several years ago, and I had been looking forward to dinner there since the muffin I had eaten in Fort Bragg had worn off several hours earlier, so once my tent was up, I hauled myself into Brookings to tuck in to something tasty. I believe it is a good omen in a family restaurant when the cook periodically wanders out of the kitchen to make a fuss over his toddler grandchildren, who are sitting at a table relishing the attention. Such were the signs, and I was not disappointed. The waitress set a delicious plate of food in front of me.

Tuesday it was time to be home, as work beckoned the following day. I had given a lot of thought overnight to making an early enough start that I would have time to ride the length of the Oregon Coast to Astoria, but knew from experience it would be a long day were I to make the attempt, and I wanted time to unwind a bit once I had arrived home. I decided to follow the coast north until my conscience began to bother me. The highway was deserted, except for me and the occasional local who would pull on and then off again within a few miles.

I stopped at Battle Rock Park in Port Orford to stretch my legs. A woman perhaps my daughter’s age was the sole occupant of the parking lot, and, as soon as I had my gear stowed, she approached me, asking for spare change. Her clothing was tattered, and she did not appear well‐fed. She also looked frightened and very small in a big world. As I left, she was sitting on a stone pillar that held up the sign at the driveway entrance.

After I crossed the Rogue River, the countdown had begun, and I made it only to Bandon before the big hand and the little hand indicated it was time to make haste for the barn. In retrospect, I could have waited until Reedsport before turning east for I–5, but, as the Oregon Coast is one of the paths out of my corner of the country, I am sure to see Reedsport (again) one day.

The trip north from California added 1,017 miles to the odometer. I was home in time for the evening rush hour. And I was safe and sound.