Best of the Southwest Oregon ADV Tour

Seven nights in a loop from Bend in Oregon, taking in the Cascade volcanoes, the coast and the redwoods. Riders bring their own bike or rent one.

Sisters comes first by way of the Newberry Volcano, which is the largest in the Cascade arc and covers an area the size of a small county, with China Hat and Smith Rock State Park on the way.

Yachats follows over the McKenzie Highway across a lava field from the Belknap Crater, a black desert of broken basalt in the middle of green forest, to a stretch of coast locals call the gem of Oregon. Bandon is next by way of Cape Perpetua and Thor’s Well, a collapsed sea cave that fills and drains with each swell and appears to be swallowing the ocean, with the Oregon Dunes beyond.

Crescent City follows in California, with the Coos County logging museum, the Oregon redwoods, and a town that was hit by a tsunami in 1964. Grants Pass comes next for Jedediah Smith Redwoods, where the trees reach 360 feet and two thousand years of age, with the Marble Halls of Oregon and the cave preserve nearby, and the loop closes to Bend through Crater Lake, Windigo Pass and the Cascade Lakes Highway. Prices are quoted in US dollars. At this price and length it is the most accessible trip the operator sells, and it covers volcanoes, coast and old-growth forest inside a single week. Bend is also an easy place to start, with a bike waiting and the first good roads within half an hour of leaving town.