A Ride to the Hood Canal in Washington State - Union, Washington - Something for everyone!

2 Margaritas Restaurant and Bar with View of Hood Canal

Sunday - always good for a ride to one of Joyce and my favorite destinations.  The Hood Canal is in Washington State and runs straight south off of the Strait of Juan De Fuca (separating the United States from the Vancouver Island, British Columbia)

It has a fish hook like shape with the hook at the south end of the Hood Canal.  By the way; it's not actually a canal, as it does not have an way in and out, but is actually dead-ended, and is more like a huge long narrow bay.

Along the bottom (or hook) portion of the Hood Canal is some extremely beautiful scenery and some great places to stop for some food or drink.

This restaurant (above - called '2 Margaritas') just opened up a few weeks ago.  It's a very good traditional Mexican restaurant with a large bar and 'decks' on each end of the building that allow a beautiful view of the Hood Canal.  We both really enjoyed what we ordered.  I got a 'fajita burrito' and Joyce got a single enchilada.  The sauces were great, the food hot, and service fast and friendly.

Just a bit farther up the road is 'The Alderbrook Inn', one of the nicest lodge type resorts you'll find with its frontage along the canal.  As an example of how pretty the view is there; Bill Gates parents (the second richest man  in the world, with rich parents to boot), live in this area.

The Alderbrook has a great restaurant and bar, including a deck that is open in the summer months.  The food served there is as good as you can get in the restaurant, but the bar food is my place!  They have a huge burger there that is the best ever.....and easily enough for two people to split and still have a hard time finishing.  It would be hard to find a more beautiful setting than the Alderbrook!  Combined with great food and drink, and it is a wonderful upscale place to enjoy the views of the Hood Canal from.

There's a great long 't' shaped dock on the canal behind the Alderbrook, and all of this is open to visitors.  You don't have to be a guest at the lodge to eat or visit.

You'll find many the biker riding the roads up and down and around the Hood Canal any time of year.  The eateries will often be 'with bikes' out front as you pull up.  I've never felt any unease at all going into all of these places to eat in my motorcycle gear, including at the Alderbrook.

I hope you'll all find the time someday to take a ride up the Hood Canal.  Please consider sending some photos and a ride story of your own for inclusion here on our club website.

Ride Safe brothers and sisters!

The WMA is near 550 members worldwide. The latest two members are from Brazil.

This photo of an old bike with sidecar is from around 1930 and is of my great grandfather and his brother Emile Grawet and Oscar Grawet. 

If you want, you can click on the picture and it will explode to a larger size.

My family has riding bikes in its blood.  This site is about riding motorcycles.  It's about sharing your ride via sending us a post that you write about your ride.  It's about sharing photos of your bike or of any bike related photos.

Please send us your favorite motorcycle themed shots and we'll post them for the Worldwide Motorcycle Association members (and anyone else) to see!

Ride safe brothers and sisters!

Whether you ride a Harley Davidson Scooter, a 'Snortin' Norton, a BMW, or a Harley Road King, the WMA is for you!

You can now purchase LOGO gear from the WMA!

You can now order embroidered WMA logo gear directly from Corporate Casuals at this website:
http://stores.corporatecasuals.com/s/wmaclub/

This is done thru an arrangement the club has with Corporate Casuals.  You place the order directly with them and they handle everything.

The vest that Gretchen is wearing was ordered a few weeks ago and is a sample of the high quality logo and clothing available. This particular item is made by Patagonia.

Enjoy and Ride Safe!

Heart of the Country; backroads - good riding on a summer day.

IF YOU DOUBLE CLICK ON THE PICTURE IT WILL EXPLODE TO FULL SIZE.

Yesterday was one of those absolutely gorgeous summer Saturdays where you just plain 'have' to get on the bike and go for a ride.

My Honda VTX1300S was quite dusty and had a few things that needed attention. I cleaned it up and put on some new mirrors and a new air filter Friday night.  Saturday morning by 9:00 AM I was ready for a car wash on 'Ruby'.

By the time I finished washing her and drying her with the hand towels, she began to take on a totally new appearance.  I hadn't given her a good bath in months.  I was shocked to see her begin to look almost like the new bike I purchased 3 years ago.

Ruby is now officially the longest I've ever owned and ridden the same bike.  In my years of riding I've always enjoyed trying out many different types of bikes.  I've owned:  Yamaha x2, Honda x 5, Harley Davidson Road King, BMW R1150rt, many scooters from Honda and Yamaha, a Kawasaki Concour, and I probably have missed one or two.

Well, here she was....nice and clean, and ready to ride!  We took off by 10AM and headed out to the coast toward a town called Ocean Shores.  Unfortunately we hit the morning fog bank about 45 minutes east of the coast.  Luckily, we know the back roads well enough that we didn't miss a second and immediately turned northeast and rode back away from the cloud bank toward Shelton, Washington on Hwy 3.

Going north from Shelton on 3, you travel about another 25 miles and come to a small town on the water called Allyn.  There is an awesome restaurant (Lennard K's) with a deck overlooking Puget Sound, and we love to eat there.   The menu was new, (bummer), we normally liked to order some sandwiches which were no longer on the menu.  However, the 'poppers' were awesome, and my blue cheese burger tasted great.  Joyce had a BLT (normally one of my first choices).

While we had lunch, the two couples next to us (who also had ridden their bikes to the restaurant), began to discuss an old Arlo Guthrie song about riding his motorcycle.  (you'll find it on the play list here).  I was able to help them remember a few lines of the song.  "I don't want a pickle; I just want to ride my motorcycle" - Arlo Guthrie - circa 1968.

After lunch, we proceeded north on 3 to Belfair, WA.  At Belfair we turned onto State Highway 106 that runs along the bottom of the Hood Canal thru Alderbrook...this is one of favorite rides anywhere.  Bill Gates ('the' Bill Gates, spent lots of summer days here where his parents still own a house on the water and where you can see them from time to time).  Normally there are very few cars and many motorcycles on this route.

The ride was almost perfect....sun shining, water glistening as we rode along its shore for miles....finally we stopped at the little store in Union, WA and had an ice cream cone (about 2:00 PM).  They have some locally made ice cream that is out of this world.

After riding back over to meet with hwy 101, we decided to continue on side roads up the Skokomish Valley.  This ride is only about 20 miles to its end at the foot of the snow capped Olympic Mountains, but its so beautiful we take it once or twice a year.  There is almost no traffic at all on this road, as it is a long way to a dead end.  It's a pity for those who turn around at the 'dead end' signs early on the road, as the valley runs thru some of the prettiest farm and ranch country you will ever see; with all of it surrounded by high mountains.

We often ride this road very slow so we can drink in the views and the smells....flowers here, cows there (I love the smell of cows, having spent my earliest years living in Nebraska)...the sky was so blue....the mountains so majestic...and the valley just perfect in its early summer attire.

We finished our ride about 5 hours after we began, returning home in time for a Saturday bbq with family.

What a way to spend a Saturday!  What did you do?

Welcome Member 532 - and please remember to send us some photos or ride stories to post to the club website.

New WMA Member Marlene Steele and 'her ride'..(another Canadian member)

Please find my motorcycle  photo attached – 2002 Heritage Springer Softail (Harley FLSTSi) Regards, Marlene Steele (“Sporty”) President – Zen Riders Motorcycle Club Vice-President, Finance, Ontario Road Riders Association Founding Board Member of Motorcycle Confederation of Canada Iron Butt Rider

First Club Discount Offer is Posted Below for South African Bike Tours

We would love to help you grow your business and make the club more fun for all, by offering a discount of your company's products and/or services to the membership of the WMA.  The first such offer is below- an amazing tour on bikes in Africa.

Please send your offers to me for posting to the website. Send them to:  bobbyg@wmaclub.com

Thank you,

Bobby G

From: Alex Jackson
To: bobbyg@wmaclub.com
Sent: Sat, June 19, 2010 1:34:44 PM
Subject: Discount and one off offer.

Hi Robert

I would like to offer all members of the group a 5% discount on any of our tours into South Africa.

As one one time offer on a first come first served basis I will also do 6 places on a tour for the price of 5 if any of your members would like to put a group together. All T's and C's on the website apply and all places must be on the same tour for the coming season. 31st Oct 2010 - 17th April 2011.

If you have any questions then please ask away.

regards

AJ

Alex J Jackson
Kaapstad Motorcycle Adventure Tours Ltd
UK Office +44 (0) 1525 377520 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +44 (0) 1525 377520      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
UK Cell +44 (0) 7930 200798 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +44 (0) 7930 200798      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
SA Cell +27(0) 7644 83844 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +27(0) 7644 83844      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
www.kaapstadmat.com

There are now 525 Members in The Worldwide Motorcycle Association!

We are a true worldwide organization with members in more than 26 countries.  There is a very active discussion area on Linkedin.com where new and ongoing discussions can be found.

We are searching now to find deals that we can provide to the members as a whole as an additional benefit for joining.

Just yesterday I ordered a WMA logo jacket to see the quality of this company's work.  If it turns out well, I'll make WMA Logo goods available for you to order directly from this company. They have some really great items from jackets, to liners, to shirts and hats that can all come with the WMA logo.  So...I'll hope this trial run is a good one.

Let's ride!

Day 3 - Home from Infocomm - Rogue River, OR to Olympia, WA - my home and the end of my ride!

It was time once again to make the final leg of my trip home.  Rogue River, Oregon to Olympia, Washington is about an 8 hour ride.  It's fairly pretty as you ride up and over Grant's Pass and then eventually into the river valleys around Eugene, Salem and then Portland Oregon.

We hit our first really bad traffic jam just north of Portland as you are heading toward the bridge over the Columbia River into Washington State.  Although we never did see what the problem was ahead, we decided that this jam was so bad, that they must have had the bridge raised for a ship.  That's all we could figure that would cause such an awful miles long mess on I-5, a major 5 lane freeway.

It was nearly 80 degrees in Portland, and we had heavy gear on still as a result of leaving Rogue River in temps of the low 60's.  After sitting and cooking for about 15 minutes, we decided to do something that you 'can' do on a motorcycle.  We rode up the side of the road past lots of cars and trucks.  When it's 80 degrees and you're stopped....any kind of movement is welcome relief.

The traffic opened up again as we got onto the bridge and never slowed down again.  We stopped for one last gas fill and coffee at Starbucks just north of Portland in Woodland, Washington.

After this stop, it was a mere 90 minute ride for me to reach my home.  Peter spent the night one last time.  We took my wife Joyce out to dinner and then called it an early night.

Peter left about 9 am on Sunday morning (June13th) for his 4 hour ride back to North Vancouver, British Columbia.  He arrived safe and sound around 1 PM.

So ended our 5th 'long ride' together.  We've now done 3 roundtrips to Las Vegas for Infocomm; one to Los Angeles for this same tradeshow, and one up to Calgary, Alberta.  We've done many shorter rides together.  Peter is an awesome ride companion.  He's a lifetime rider with tremendous riding knowledge, he's very mechanically proficient and is also a multiple black belt holder in mixed martial arts, having owned his own martial arts club. Peter's all black 1999 Harley Davidson Dyna Sport is tuned to perfection and sounds just plain awesome!  My favorite bike sound.  You see very few older bikes on the open road.  His bike is truly special; it has cachet.  Since he's also much uglier than me, you could hardly want a better riding partner....

Addendum:  Peter just wrote to tell me he is not the ugly one....He says he's the handsome one, and I'm the 'wise' one.....OK...guess we'll go with that.