Seeing the Snake and then going to the sun

The train came bowling out of the fractured basalt hills of the Washtucna Coulee, keeping to the maze of abandoned river channels and buttes carved by ice age floods that eclipsed the Palouse Hills from there down to the Snake River. It was a consist almost two miles long hauling potash that had been mined in Saskatchewan, being powered by Canadian Pacific locomotives through the Inland Empire. My brother John and I were relaxing beneath the black locust trees of Lyons Ferry State Park when the train advanced into view and onto the Joso High Bridge crossing the Snake, the longest and highest bridge in the Union Pacific Railroad system. Below, the Corps of Discovery led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark had paddled their canoes past this place on October 13, 1805, on their way west to the Pacific Ocean more than a century before the construction of the bridge. Corps member Sargeant John Ordway made an entry in his journal for that day describing having seen a great number of fishing camps where the natives fish everry Spring.¹ It was on the ground above those encampments that we stood watching as the train passed, there to stretch our legs.

We had begun the day at Pioneer Coffee Roasting Company in North Bend, our motorcycles packed for a trip over Beartooth Pass in Wyoming. Our plan was to be away from home for less than a week, which for us when we take to the road on these long‐distance rides is a relatively brief span, but we were of course happy to be on our way. The viaduct at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse Rivers is a familiar landmark, and we had planned our stop at Lyons Ferry before finishing our coffee. The Indigenous people, the Palus, were in their seasonal camp here when Lewis and Clark arrived; fifty years later, after ten thousand years of habitation, the Palus would cede the land to the U.S. government in the Treaty with the Yakama of Camp Stevens. In 1969, that ancestral fishing ground was flooded by Lake Herbert G. West as it formed behind the Lower Monumental Dam, one of the elements of the Federal Columbia River System of flood control, electric power generation, navigation, and irrigation. Now, our circulation restored and the potash safely across the Snake River, it was time for us to continue on our way.

We turned south onto Washington State Route 129 at Clarkston to treat ourselves to a ride on one of the most well‐reviewed stretches of road for thrill‐seeking motorcyclists in the United States, which conveniently would lead us to our destination for the day in Enterprise, Oregon. I had ridden on this road several years ago and was glad to finally be returning for another opportunity to scrub the sides of my tires on Rattlesnake Grade, which is steep and scenic, with narrow switchbacks descending into a mountain canyon that discourage many drivers. The Lewiston Tribune newspaper in Idaho, for example, tried expanding its coverage to Enterprise in the 1970s and ’80s but abandoned the idea because newspaper delivery trucks had too much trouble negotiating Rattlesnake Grade twice daily.²

Safely at the bottom of the grade, we stopped for lunch at Boggan’s Oasis on the far side of the Grande Ronde River, a designated National Wild and Scenic River renowned for its sports fishery. The highway crossing was lined with vehicles of all shapes and sizes attended by people young and old in the hubble‐bubble that often occurs when rod and reel are brought into proximity with fish. Meanwhile, my beef dip sandwich and potato salad were quite satisfactory, as was being able to strike the restaurant from my list of places I had once passed and wished to return to visit.

After lunch it was up Buford Grade and in to Oregon. The drive through the pines of the Wallowa National Forest on an early‐summer afternoon was lovely and we arrived at The Ponderosa Motel in Enterprise in fine fettle after a long day on the road. The town name was inspired by the entrepreneurial temper of the community, where such things as factions, cliques, rings and saloons will be unknown.³ Its library, established in 1899, attracted a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to fund a permanent building that was completed in 1914 and, of the thirty‐one Carnegie libraries built in Oregon, the Enterprise Public Library today is one of only eleven of them still being used as public libraries. I took a stroll the two blocks from the motel to admire the American Renaissance presence of that venerable building, soon after which John and I walked to La Laguna for dinner, leaving with good food in full stomachs.

We were on the road on the second day at 6∶30 a.m. beneath clear skies and at 45℉ on the thermometer. Taking up Hells Canyon Scenic Byway on the way out of Enterprise, we headed toward the turn in the byway onto Little Sheep Creek Highway № 350 in the nearby small town of Joseph. Despite its diminutive size, one requires no map to find Joseph, which describes itself as the Jewel of Northeast Oregon, as the Wallowa Mountains create an unmistakable guidepost that one need only follow to that tidy haven for tourists at which the mountains point. The highest peak in Oregon that is not in the Cascade Range is here in the Wallowa Mountains, which were plain to see, with just a few puffy clouds drifting among the summits awaiting a warming morning to spirit them away.

The plateau upon the western edge of which sit Enterprise and Joseph is home to the Zumwalt Prairie, at 329,600 acres the largest remaining intact Pacific Northwest bunchgrass prairie in North America. To the east leaving Joseph, we intruded upon the matutinal activities of the sparrows and meadowlarks at home on the prairie as we rode into the rising sun across the undulating landscape. Forty percent of the area described today by the forty‐eight coterminous United States was once prairie, now reduced to less than two percent. Seeing this isolated survivor of the refashioning of the American West filled me with the romance of quiet prairies disappearing beyond the horizon in all directions, and it was with thoughts of the virgin earth that I drove onward to Hells Canyon.

The scenic byway leaves the pavement at Forest Road 39 beyond the Zumwalt Prairie. The road, which is maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, leads to Hells Canyon Overlook, where we stopped to consider our place in the universe, provoked by the display of forces on hand that had created the landscape before us: the deepest river gorge in North America, two million years old, fittingly overseen by the Seven Devils Mountains rising 7,900 vertical feet above the river. The land is a federal wilderness, so the wild onions, bluebells, helianthella, and larkspur that covered the ground were not in competition with the plow or the bulldozer, and the breeze that swept down the canyon was sweet air filled with the silence of a bygone world. Are we, as the Roman poet Horace wrote, just ciphers, born to consume the fruits of the earth?⁴ Is life primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught? Is it a quest for meaning? Will we all one day be received at Graceland? Some hope to find answers to such questions when on the road, whereas I was pacified merely taking in the view.

Shortly after leaving Hells Canyon Overlook we had to stop for cattle that were crossing the road. A fully mature bull stood in the center of the narrow lane, observing us from the far side of the slow‐moving creatures, and remained after they were clear of the right‐of‐way, appearing to weigh the consequences of charging us. He eventually ambled off the road, and both of us later described having been looking for an exit at the moment he seemed on the verge of demonstrating his might to the two interlopers that had appeared from around the corner.

We pulled up a couple of hours later at Canyon Station Cafe in Cambridge, Idaho, for breakfast. The clock had shifted forward when we crossed the Snake River into Idaho, so we were eating later than usual, but the breakfast sandwich was still tasty. After that, we meandered our way past Weiser to I–84, which we used to scram from Boise at the posted speed of 80 mph. Once under the spell of unimpeded velocity — the motorcycle always ready to hurtle forward more quickly, the warm noontime air a comfortable envelope within which to travel — the need to slow to a stop at the bottom of the exit to the Sun Valley Highway near Mountain Home fleetingly grated on the nerves. How dare I be made to stop! In reply, the highway soon delivered Wrangler Drive‐In, Home of the Road Kill Patty Melt, in Fairfield, just in time for lunch. We sat outside enjoying sandwiches and the expanse of blue sky that lit the Snake River Plain, still in touch with the river that was somewhere off to the south behind a belt of rolling foothills.

Ahead of us was a vast volcanic landscape spanning more than a thousand square miles of the plain, featuring a chain of cracks and fissures that comprise the largest, deepest, and most recent volcanic rift system in the United States: the Great Rift of Idaho within Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. The highway follows the crease of the plain and the Pioneer Mountains along the northern boundary of the preserve, from which only a few glimpses of its otherworldly formations may be seen while en route to Arco, but those brief views of the Earth molded and heaped into masses of irregular and scattered forms caused me to veer onto the shoulder as I craned my neck trying to linger on their details.

We reached Comfort Suites in Idaho Falls at a quarter after five and unpacked for the night. The hotel is situated along the Idaho Falls River Walk that covers five miles along the shore of the Snake River flowing through town, and I took advantage of the evening weather to walk a bit of its length before dinner. John and I ventured down the street to Jakers Bar and Grill, where we sat at the bar to eat and to shoot the breeze with the bartender, who we learned had worked there for twenty‐seven years.

Our plan to cross Beartooth Pass was thwarted by weather on the third day, after snow had begun falling overnight and continued into the morning to pile itself upon the summit. We had designed our route to account for the possibility that the weather would not cooperate and allow us over the pass, so would be turning toward Livingston, Montana, from within Yellowstone National Park rather than at Joliet in Montana on the far side of the Beartooth Mountains. We saddled up after a pretty good breakfast at City Bagels & Bakery in Idaho Falls and shortly thereafter parted company with the Snake River two days after having crossed it at Lyons Ferry in Washington.

Once we got into the national park, we decided to go see the Road Closed sign for ourselves at the bottom of Beartooth Pass, which, sure enough, was right where it was expected. But the detour was not altogether unhappy, as we found Log Cabin Cafe in Silver Gate along the way and stopped for lunch. It was a nice day for a drive despite the disappointment fostered by the weather, and who would not rather be roaming around Yellowstone than working? One of my favorite stretches of road is U.S. Route 89 out of Gardiner that chases the Yellowstone River into Livingston, and it was via that picturesque route that we reached the Murray Hotel and got settled in for the night.

The author and Emmy‐award‐winning television personality Anthony Bourdain was someone whose reports from the road I enjoyed, and he once declared that the Murray was one of his favorite hotels. The early twentienth century rusticity of this old railroad hotel, which is across the street from the Livingston Depot, is charming and functional in a stalwart arrangement that John and I prefer when traveling. The rooms are spacious with modern features but decorated to evoke the heyday of rail travel to Yellowstone and the Hollywood celebrities that followed. We ate dinner inside the Murray at The Murray Bar and listened to live music there performed by Maracujá, which was polished and fitting and an unqualified delight to hear.

I took a walk after dinner to investigate the surroundings, beginning with the Livingston Depot. Built in 1902 for the Northern Pacific Railroad using a highly ornamented Italianate style, it was donated to the city in 1985 by Burlington Northern Railroad, the successor to the Northern Pacific. Now restored, it is the splendid home to a seasonal museum and year‐round community and event center. A few blocks away, I discovered Sacajawea Park on the Yellowstone River, named for the Indigenous woman who accompanied the Corps of Discovery from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean and back as an interpreter and guide. During their return from the Pacific in 1806, Sacajawea led William Clark and a contingent of the Corps into the valley via a bison trail through the Bridger and Gallatin mountain ranges. The park is about a half‐mile downriver from the probable location where they arrived at the river, and I lingered at its shore to watch the shadows of sunset fall upon the Absaroka Range.

Ready the next morning to ride beneath the Big Sky to Glacier National Park, we first enjoyed breakfast at Montana Cup Coffeehouse and Bakery, then resumed our northbound journey on U.S. Route 89. The drive through the Little Belt Mountains southeast of Great Falls was a new reminder of how much I enjoy these trips; the sightseeing possible from a motorcycle when moving at speed is limited to brief looks around, but the compensation is that the view changes with each moment, and here there was a pageant of rushing streams, thick forests, limestone outcrops, and sloping mountain valleys to win the appreciative eye. The mountains were once rich in silver, gold, gemstones, coal, and minerals: we passed through the village of Neihart, which produced over three million dollars in sapphires, and is now surrounded by the remnants of mines dotting the mountainsides.

We eventually rode in to Choteau just as lunch time announced itself and decided that Outpost Deli looked like a good place to stop and heed that call. The sandwich they assembled for me was quite satisfying, and business was brisk, so years of sizing up restaurants while on the fly paid off once again.

We continued on U.S. Route 89 until Saint Mary at the eastern end of Going‐to‐the‐Sun Road, the only road that traverses Glacier National Park, and our means of reaching its far side. Completed in 1932, the road is an iconic feature of the National Park system, climbing as it does into the Rocky Moutains to the continental divide on a winding course designed to introduce visitors to some of the breathtaking landscapes within the park. Saint Mary Lake at the east entrance to the park makes an appearance in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, and it was the first stop of many that we made to take pictures along the fifty‐mile drive across the park.

Another reason for frequent stops was the bumper‐to‐bumper traffic: the road was filled to capacity with like‐minded tourists. As much as I enjoyed the idea of going to the sun on my motorcycle, I am no more interested in sitting in clogged traffic in a national park than I am sitting in clogged traffic on I–405 back home and suspect that this may have been my last trip through Glacier National Park unless a zombie apocalypse curbs the national enthusiasm for travel. It is true, however, that the Red Jammers were on the road, and seeing them in action was worth the trouble. They are vintage buses used at the park to transport visitors since 1936, painted to match the color of ripe mountain ash berries, and known as jammers because of the sound the original unsynchronized transmissions made when the driver shifted gears on the steep roads of the park.⁵ I have vague memories of the Red Jammers from a family trip through the park when I was a boy; seeing them today produced an almost saccharine response primed by the reminiscence from my childhood and magnified by the quaintness of the eighty‐year‐old vehicles, of which, as of 2017, thirty‐three of the original thirty‐five remain in operation.

John has been riding Triumph motorcycles on our trips for years. For reasons that elude me, they have attracted no end of favorable attention from people who ask about them and who have soundly ignored the Yamahas on which I ride. While stopped in traffic on the Going‐to‐the‐Sun Road, one member of a group of people walking by on the far shoulder of the road shouted at me, Nice FJR! I became quite emotional.

Then, of course, there was the scenery. More than a million acres of Rocky Mountain turf, the centerpiece of an ecosystem known by UNESCO as the Crown of the Continent, where, although the glaciers after which the park is named are isolated and in retreat beneath changing skies, a few may still be seen from the road. Geological evidence points to the continual presence of glaciers in the area since at least 5000 BCE. Since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, of the estimated eighty glaciers then in what would eventually become Glacier National Park, melt has claimed all but twenty‐six. The National Park Service updated its exhibits in the park this year to reflect the latest science around their retreat, specifying that, though they are melting, when the glaciers will be gone is uncertain. Going‐to‐the‐Sun Road run opened for the season the week before we left home, and we were glad for the good fortune with which our plans had been favored that allowed us to be here to stop and take a look around, because what there was to be seen was arresting and disappearing.

We drove out of the park at West Glacier and into Whitefish for the night, parking the bikes at Downtowner Inn. John found the excellent Tupelo Grille for dinner, which delivered some delicious scallops to my side of the table and brought out a live band to accompany the meal.

The drive on the hillside above Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River awaited us on our fifth day once Montana Coffee Traders in Whitefish had provided caffeine and breakfast to send us on our way. Lake Koocanusa was formed from the Kootenai River behind Libby Dam, which was completed in 1974. Montana State Highway 37 out of Eureka led us to the lake, and then upon an archetypal ride through the mountains that was never far from a view of the lake, which is big — it extends ninety miles north from the dam between the Purcell Mountains and the Salish Mountains into British Columbia. When I first encountered the place name Koocanusa, I immediately wondered which Indigenous language it was from. It turns out that the answer is none; instead, when the dam was under construction, the Corps of Engineers conducted a contest to name the lake, which Alice Beers from Rexford, Montana, won by creating a portmanteau of Kootenai River, Canada, and USA. As the road crossed the river at the town of Libby, for which the dam is named, I had been reminded that the scenery of northwest Montana is best viewed when the skies are blue, as they had been during the lovely drive along the lake.

At Newport, Washington, on the border with Idaho, we cruised into the parking lot at Mi Pueblo and stopped to eat a darn good chicken mole. With lunch settled, we rolled on to the North Cascades Highway to follow the Pend Oreille River out of town. The highway, which begins a block from the restaurant in Newport and ends 436 miles later at Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, is the longest in the state. For reasons that are apparent, where the highway unites with the Pend Oreille flowing northwest toward British Columbia and its confluence there with the Columbia River, it is incorporated into the scenic International Selkirk Loop byway. This is beautiful country, and we had the road largely to ourselves. The ride into the Selkirk Muntains from the turn at Tiger is irresistibly fast around its many corkscrewed turns and across its surging terrain, with the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge to one side and the Okanogan Highlands all around. The calories from lunch got burned focusing on making haste beneath the Douglas fir and western hemlock to Colville.

We actually were in no hurry to get to Colville; the race up the hill from the Pend Oreille was wholly an exercise in bike management. We were glad, then, when the nice young proprietors of Selkirk Motel agreed to our checking in for the night well in advance of the posted hour for allowing such a thing. After unpacking, I read the historic plaque attached to the motel, which says it was built in 1952 by Mr. & Mrs. Howard Smith and originally known as the Smith Motel. Then, with little else to do in Colville, I spent the 83℉ afternoon watching another guest of the motel repair the engine in his car there in the parking lot; whatever was wrong with it required making a greasy mess, as meanwhile the young couple we had met at the front desk busily ran from chore to chore doing their utmost to service what, frankly, was a dive, albeit tidy and clearly receiving determined attention. It was eventually time for dinner, which we addressed by walking up the street to Colville Pour House for some pub food. My notes from the restaurant say, Food okay — must have been open mic night. Music bad. Thus, Colville: the City of Proud Heritage named for a London governor of Hudson’s Bay Company. Its main north‐south street is U.S. Route 395, which ends in the Mojave Desert 1,300 miles away where it intersects Interstate 15 at Hesperia, California, and its unusually wide streets originally designed to allow a sixteen‐horse team of log‐hauling horses to turn a load of logs.⁶ The driveway out of our motel parking lot led onto the wide Main Street, but I saw no horses nor California license plates while there.

We had breakfast our last day on the road at The Coffee Shoppe before leaving Colville. The place was open at 5∶00 a.m. offering great service, and, as the menu announced, everything made fresh to order, deliciously. We resumed riding on North Cascades Highway, through Kettle Falls to Sherman Pass and beyond, which took us past the site of the Turkey Incident from 2010. We split from North Cascades Highway in Okanogan, ironically just as the highway arrived in the vicinity of North Cascades National Park, and headed south following the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers toward the Cascade Loop scenic byway and its route through the Cascade Mountains at Stevens Pass. The skies were threatening rain at the turn to the west in Wenatchee, and by the time we reached Good Mood Food for lunch in Leavenworth, the rain was no longer hypothetical. It was the first of our trip, naturally found only at the verge of western Washington, whence legend says it rains all the time, and welcomed because it signified home, where I arrived that afternoon at about three o’clock.

Update October 7, 2025
This video from The Triangle Railfan YouTube channel conveys how grand the sight of the Joso High Bridge in use can be.