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CT125 goes to Mt. Rainier

SneakyDingo

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 6, 2021
Messages
1,560
Route (approximate; there were some detours): https://ridewithgps.com/routes/40184743
Distance: 333.7 mi (mapped is 348 mi, I probably made a mistake somewhere, like the exact location of where things went wrong, etc).
Fuel / MPG: 2.8 gal @ 119 mpg.
Time: 10h26m riding, 12h (exactly) door to door.

In the summer of Seattle, there's a bicycle event called the Seattle to Portland ride (STP), which covers 204'ish mi from Seattle to Portland, and they put Dan Henry arrows on the ground to help the riders navigate. The route isn't exactly optimal for someone on a motorcycle, since they close roads and it doesn't go exactly where I want to go, but it generally sticks to roadways of 55 mph speed limits or less with wide shoulders, which is very useful for someone on a slow motorcycle.

Given I'm... erm... between jobs right now and being fiscally irresponsible, I decided to make a mid-week trip to Mt. Rainier 2 days before STP, navigating using Dan Henry's to Puyallup, then detouring from the main route to Paradise and on to Sunrise, all before heading home. Piece of cake!! Load up the website, checked the road closures and... somehow didn't register one of the roadways I wanted to ride on would be closed due to damage caused by a large boulder the size of a small boulder damaging the roadway at an earlier date (actual photo). More on that later.

Logistically speaking, the ride itself is pretty straightforward as long as you can solve the long distances between gas stations and figure out what you'll do for eating food. I solved part A with the Rotopax 2 gal can, which fit my crate perfectly, and part B... well, I kind of forgot about part B, so I actually ate my first meal of the day stuck near some roadworks as a pack of doritos and a coke.

All was good from the start. Shortly after the ride started, stopped and snapped a photo of a ridiculously good looking bike and the mountain I was planning to ride to, far off in the distance.
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Followed the Dan Henry arrows, and stopped for my first quick break to let cars past on WA-7, just before Alder. I should have waited a bit, because there was a rest stop that I used and snapped a photo of a tourist attraction train.
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Next stop was the actual park. Entry was $25 for motorcycles. I hung on to my receipt just in case, which ended up being a good idea, because I needed it later for Sunrise and I forgot that they have two separate stations for those.
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The entire ride up is gorgeous. I'll spare you the details, but there's reflective lakes, amazing views... it's really worth it.
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Paradise is an easier ride to get to, but apart from the reflection lakes, I like it less than the other vantage point I wanted to hit up that day. This is where my plan came unstuck a little. Shortly after the reflection lake, I ran into the road closure I mentioned earlier, which was a detour through mostly 35 mph zoned space, some of it poorly maintained. The other problem is that it starts to put you on approaches that are less forgiving to air cooled low power motorcycles.

"If not now, when?" I asked myself this, said f**k it, and YOLO'd my way to Sunrise. Part way up, I felt like the bike was behaving weird and I realized the oil temperature light had been glaring at me for a while. Maybe climbing lots of elevation at speed through thinner air isn't so good for an air cooled bike. I stopped for a bit to let it cool at the entrance to the park near Sunrise, and snapped photos for every single family of tourists that came by until the engine had cooled down somewhat. Sunrise is my favorite ride on Mt. Rainier and holds a special place in my heart: my favorite view in Washington can be found there, and it was one of the first rides I did in the USA with a friend. I also have a habit of snapping a photo next to the sunrise sign every time I go up there.
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With the job done and fuel looking a bit iffy for whether I would make it home on what Mr. Rotopax and I had carried together. I started the navigation home but part way there realized that my math-fu was a little too tight on the tolerances for how much fuel would be needed to make it home, particularly due to that 79 mi detour. I zipped over to Costco Gas in Kirkland, then proceeded to go the rest of the way home from there. On paper, I would have made it with 2 mi of fuel to spare, but that's cutting it a little too close.
 

SneakyDingo

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 6, 2021
Messages
1,560
The view from the top was stunning. This is the view from the stop at the Sunrise viewpoint, to the left of the photo with a lot of people in it.

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One thing that is a huge benefit for bicyclists and motorcyclists is we can stop in places the others can't. Most of these places I was taking my photos I could see drivers rolling past who were looking at the view and where I'd stopped, and they couldn't stop there because they'd be blocking the roadway, or there just wasn't enough space to do it.

Bonus photo where I could stop and someone else couldn't.
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In my hometown we have a scarp but no real mountain ranges to speak of. Going bush doesn't have any of these geological formations unless you head quite far out (although they are spectacular there too). I used to be able to see Mt. Rainier from my apartment window in one apartment; the Cascades mountain range in a different apartment from the roof, and the Olympic Peninsula mountains from a different apartment. That this is my playground now is one of the reasons I love living in America.
 

eastema

Active member
Joined
May 17, 2022
Messages
138
Location
Southern NH
That's one of the fun parts of these little bikes. What would be just a nice ride on the harley, is a big adventure on the trail. Real nice pics.
 
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