Usual Suspects to "Isle of Lk. Cavanaugh"

XLSR Meetup Ride with combination of club members and meetup.com folks:  Pace began fairly mild, further north went wild.  High Bridge-Ben Howard-Reiner Rd, Woods Creek to Granite Falls.  Half the group dropped off so we headed up Burn Road, cut off on Lake Cavanaugh for a scorching backroad blast, then back on SR9. 165mi.

Cathcart to Lake McMurray

Ran out east toward the foothills, then north hitting my local favorites;  High Bridge Road out to Meadow Lake, then up Burn Rd and Hwy 9 to Lake McMurray, then back home mostly reversed course.   Meadow Lake was awesome, free of traffic both times.  Afternoon temps in the mid 80s.  Hwy 9 was packed with Cagers and Road Sofas, including a wreck.  Monday AM, I learned I should have started with a shorter workout for the first ride of the season.  142mi.  

High Bridge/Carnation/Old Woodinville-Duvall

Garage Sales, both High Bridge and OWD were traffic-free.  OWD has some sweet turns! 106mi.  

Adarius' First Ride

Fresh oil @ ODO 22800.  Down 9th to 228th, out 527 to Bothell, return on back roads, hit 55MPH. Adarius LIKES! Wants a longer ride!

Fresh Skins

'Nuther set of Conti Road Attacks, ODO 22280

Diamond Lake 2012

• Day 2:  Clackamas River Canyon OR224 to FR42  Starting ODO 21520 mi. Route: 70 miles
• Day 4:  Pavement on the lake loop road is astonishingly good, just not crooked enough.  The road design defies the 35MPH speed limit.  So did I... The north end has a few sweet combinations that work nicely at freeway speeds.
• Day 7:   Toketee Tour --    Got trapped in OR138 construction traffic, trying to ride a bungled route. Finally went back to Watson Falls and realized FR37 was what I was looking for.  Several Fun miles at the top. One long straight stretch but definitely worth the trip.  Scouted Old Toketee road but ran out of gas and time.  Will try again tomorrow.~79 mi.
• Day 9:  Ilahee+Copeland/Canton/Panther Creek Tour
• Ran up the Ilahee while trying to scout the Old Toketee road. Definitely an interesting old road but the pavement is simply too far gone for sport touring.  Adventure bikers can feast on this but I turned around after about 7 miles.  

• 22 miles up and down on Copeland Creek.  Nice curves and decent pavement. Brush ruined excellent views of Copeland Creek, but the occasional two lanes, road engineering, and generally good pavement is worth many repeats.

• Fueled up in Glide, then ran back up to Steamboat to ride Canton Creak road to the summit intersection of Canton, Rock, and Sharps Creek roads.  Long stretch of awkward straights finally give way to several miles of challenging technical twisties on a steep ascent to the summit.  Badly overgrown brush on the sides of the road made for very limited sight lines and took a lot of the juice out of the ride.  Worth doing, done it, won't go back. 

• Panther Creek (NF-4714)  was dessert for the day and it was twenty miles (round trip) of unadulterated, five-star, technical riding on a classic Oregon one-lane logging road.  Unrelenting curves start less than a half-mile off OR138 and there are very few straight sections, none of them of significant length.  Sight lines were unusually good with many opportunities to see to the end of six turn combinations, possibly due to fires or controlled burns in the not-so-distant past.  Not that there weren't tire-scorching switch backs and blind rock overhangs, but sight lines are generally better than what you encounter in the Coast range or on the west slope of the Cascades. Pavement was generally good all the way to the interection with the gravel-only NF-2703.  Yes, there was gravel, wood debris, and an occasional sunken grade - one in the best part of the line through a sharp bend that will launch the incautious rider into the trees - but you won't find many go cart tracks like this in the Pacific Northwest.  The net effect of this end-of-the-day ride was to make me want more.  I will be back to do Panther Creek and Copeland Creek as often as I can get back home to the North Umpqua. Rear tire is toast after only 4K; time for new skins. ~220 mi., ODO 22060        

ESSB Snohomish-Skagit Backroads

ESSB ride hosted by Dennis, with Caroline and Will.G.  Cathcart out to Granite Falls, then up to Arlington, Hwy 9 up to the combos north of Lake McMurray.  Dennis took us out west of I-5 and showed us a few interesting stashes of typical farm-market roads.  Scouted the backroads to Flowing Lake.  Ran up and down W.end Meadow Lake road a couple times.  325 mi.