For several years we’ve been taking a motorcycle trip as part of my birthday celebration. These trips have taken us around the Olympic Peninsula and throughout Vancouver Island, and this year to a new area of British Columbia that’s long been on my list – the Okanogan Valley!

We meant to make this trip over Labor Day last year but the terrible forest fires across British Columbia and just south of Penticton made it impossible.

Thankfully July is early enough in the season to miss most of the fires, so our plans finally came together!

The beauty of my birthday weekend is that we both have Independence Day off work, so we only had to take one vacation day. Our itinerary ended up looking like this:

• Day 1: Drive from Lynnwood to Winthrop after work (182 miles)
• Day 2: Drive from Winthrop to Penticton (136 miles)
• Day 3: Explore Penticton (0 miles)
• Day 4: Drive from Penticton to Hope (152 miles)
• Day 5: Drive from Hope to Lynnwood (153 miles)

Total Miles = 623

Our first day we rode to Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop via the North Cascades Pass. This was my first time over this pass on my bike and it was the perfect weather for it!

Diablo Lake was beautiful, the Cascade Mountains were a delight, and we safely arrived at the resort in time to enjoy a short hike, dinner, and sunset. It was the perfect way to begin our bike trip.

I’ll revise this post later and link each day to an individual post with more details about our adventures. Suffice it to say we had an incredible time exploring more of Washington and British Columbia on the bikes.

We got to stay in some incredible accommodations, we got lost on some back roads, we shared some delicious meals, we hiked to some beautiful spots, and I got to break in my brand-new, one-piece motorcycle suit!

It was a wonderful and memorable 35^th birthday, spent with my very best friend. Who could ask for more?