After waking in the hotel of despair we headed to the same restaurant we had dinner at mainly because they had a working Internet connection and we needed our fix. There we had an awesome breakfast (much better than dinner), and plotted out our day. With a unanimous vote we decided on a short ride day after the two marathon days we’d had. I’d heard of a hot springs from other motorcyclists on a blog site, and it happened to be a short ride away. The decision couldn’t be more clear. Route plotted and off we went.
It was a fairly simple route. Follow US route 395, hang a right at US route 20, hook up with State route 78 bang your there. Well the directionally challenged individuals at Garmin threw me a curve ball. About twenty miles outside of Burns the GPS told me to hang a left onto a Forestry Service road. Now having a dual sport motorcycle I’ve been itching to test it off road. As we approached I asked Angie over the intercom if she wanted to give it a try. A hesitating “yes” came back so off we went. We turned onto the “paved” (per Garmin) road and headed up the gravel road. Sure it was a slower pace, but now we were “extreme” doing what my bike was built to do. However, it is not quite what Angie’s scooter was built to do.
We worked our way up and up the gravel road and everything was going along great. We hung two rights, per the GPS, and ended up on this seriously rutted dirt road with some serious puddles. We continued on our path through the muck and mire until we reached a barbed wire gate. Now I’ve seen these gates before in the previously mentioned blog, and I’m fairly certain that we could have gone through. However, on the other side of the gate lurked a severely rutted roadway filled with more muck and mire. I really wanted to head through, but Angie didn’t. In the end we turned around, and are probably better off for it. All I had was my GPS telling me I could continue through. So rather than get shot by an angry rancher, Angie’s scooter stuck up to the handle bars in the muck, or becoming horribly lost in the wilderness of south eastern Oregon we turned around.
Back on the road we made it in fair time to the hot springs and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the day.