SBWS Grand Tour?
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Got my book today. Whoop!
Now…let’s ride!
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@murphomatic woohoo!!!
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Here are the checkpoints this year on the map. Looks like a number of them are reachable for a great day ride…
The closest ones are:
- Duck Inn in Skamokawa, WA (~100 miles head out HWY 47 through Pittsburg and then Longview)
- Big Wave Cafe in Manzanita, OR (~90 miles)
- Lincoln Store in Salem, OR (~50 miles down 99W)
- Frank’s Burgers in Mapleton, OR (~170 miles - got a great route to take for this one)
- Eagle Crossing in Warm Springs, OR (~170 miles - we should make a loop through Fossil on this one for lunch)
The rest are perhaps over-nighters. Some of the far reach ones are in Butte, MT and a couple in Wyoming. Who wants to go on an adventure???
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@murphomatic In!
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We should do one big circle and get all the out of state points in one roadtrip.
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@Diana - totally. That would be an outstanding trip. It makes a pretty decent loop out through Idaho and into Wyoming and up through Montana. Pick up some of the Northeastern OR checkpoints on the way out or back.
We should plan something that puts us on the road for a week or maybe two if we could take our time to see some sights and not feel like every day was WFO to make the next destination. Not that I have anything against WFO.
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@murphomatic The whole route is 3,257 miles which would obviously be tweaked to find the good mc road.
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Nice @Diana - that’s awesome. Looking at the route - it looks totally doable in a week’s time - but it would be good to plan for 10-12 days on the road just to make padding. The first two days would be a little long - but we could probably also knock out the Skamokawa, WA and Manzanita checkpoints on weekends before the big ride…that would take about 120 miles out of Day 1.
- Day 1 - B - H checkpoints - stay over in Medford/Ashland (~600 miles).
- Day 2 - I, J and K - stay in Boise (another ~600 miles)
- Day 3 - L and M and stay in Cokeville, WY (~400 miles)
- Day 4 - N and O and stay in Butte, MT (~450 miles)
- Day 5 - P and stay in Wallowa or down in Joseph (love it there ~450 miles)
- Day 6 - Q and R stay somewhere around Dayville or John Day (~250 miles)
- Day 7 - S and T (Warm Springs) then Home (~250 miles)
What a great way to get out and see some of the western US this summer huh?
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600 mile days…yikes! I did 500 once and I was done. 12 days is an average of 300 per day. I like that much better especially in the heat on the east side. I have the Oregon, Washington and California Butler maps which shows all the best mc roads. We used it through northern California and ended up on some roads we would have never taken otherwise.
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Would you break it up in two or three different trips maybe?
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@carriebob Yeah, the thought of a single trip to grab everything sounds epic, but in all the past years of doing the Grand Tour - the “Uber Trip” is somewhat of a pipe dream.
It is definitely best to break it up into multiple rides. There can still be a trip that is the “Pièce De Résistance” that can capture some of the more remote checkpoints, but we should definitely scoop up the Oregon checkpoints in smaller bites.Has anyone else gotten a GT book?
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I’m in. I’ll register for the Grand Tour today, and get the book. I’m totally fine with ~300mile days; not sure if I want to do ~600 mile days. And taking that much time in a row off is going to be an issue for me; being self-employed sucks.
What software are you using to plan the route?
I think some three day weekend type rides would be awesome; blow out of town early on a Friday, get to ‘H’, spend the night, come back up and do ‘I’, ‘J’, and the finish point on Sat., spend the night and then head back home on Sun.
Couple weeks later, go out and do S-O, out and back?
K-N some other weekend?
