Fellow Oregonians: We live in a wonderland.

I just got back from a 2500 mile motorbike ride with an old friend around Oregon with a couple of dashes into Washington and California. We went to many places that I had been before but then to many that I explored for the first time despite having lived in Oregon for almost 22 years – some of these places I did not even know about. Here is snapshot of our ten day ride.

This place is big for goodness sake – Oregon has the same area as the UK with a twentieth of the people.

Up the Columbia Gorge in mist and rain past the waterfalls and massive cliffs. Run up to Glenwood in WA to ride down the Klickitat River. Up the Columbia River then along the farms and valleys and across the rolling hills to Heppner and Pendleton.

North to Walla Walla and Clarkston to get around the Wallowa Mountains to Joseph. Through Hells Canyon and back around to Baker City and the Oregon Trail. Through the Blue Mountains to John Day and Burns, then south across Malheur Lake to Frenchglen and the view of the Steens Mountains.

Offroad across the Catlow Valley and Hart Mountain to the Warner Valley Wetlands and Lakeview and across Quartz Mountain to Klamath Falls.

Off to Ashland to see HenryV at the Shakespeare Festival (Spoiler Alert – the English win) then on the back roads (we took Dead Indian Memorial Rd. out of Ashland – only in America folks) around Mt. McLoughlin to Crater Lake and onwards to Bend.

Offroad out of Bend into the Deschutes National Forest and across Christmas Lake Valley to the Summer Lake Hotsprings. Back to Bend via Fort Rock and the Cascades Lakes Highway with views of Mt. Bachelor and The Sisters.

Finally Bend to Sisters to Breitenbush and back to Portland along the Clackamas River.

Any one of these legs could have been worth a few days to stay and explore and hike and talk. And we only scratched the surface of the state; there are so many more places that we just di not have time to get to. But we still went to every one of Oregon’s seven climate zones – from 32 degrees at Crater Lake with icy rain to 95 degrees at Frenchglen with friendly mosquitos – and we rode through 26 of Oregon’s 36 counties.