We took a little overnight trip to Hood River this weekend as a shakedown for our upcoming trip to Nakusp in August (hooray! It’s been too long since we’ve made it to a Horizons Unlimited meetup).
We had really nice weather, sunny and a little breezy. My new Mosko Moto Backcountry 30L duffle worked great – it stayed right in place and didn’t budge. I’m looking forward to adding their Backcountry 25L panniers to the Scrambler soon. The only thing I really need to do to get my bike all set for Nakusp is to get a windscreen. I’ve only really commuted on the Scrambler, and I’m lucky to get to 55 most of the time. It’s a naked bike, and there’s a lot of wind buffeting to the chest and arms, and it felt like work (to me, anyway) to pilot the bike at speeds of 65+ mph. A good windscreen, while certainly not sexy (actually, pretty un-sexy) will do wonders for all day touring comfort.
Hood River itself was great. We stayed at the Hood River Hotel, a super-cute old hotel right in downtown. We were pleasantly surprised to see that Broder, one of our favorite brunch spots in Portland, had just opened in our hotel. Hooray, Swedish breakfast. Also consumed plenty of beer and other delicious food. We’ll have to do it again soon!