Jul/Aug '25

Portland, Oregon Shamrock Tour®

Justin W. Coffey

11 min read

Spruce, Cedar, Oak and Giant Airplanes

Birds aren’t real, the sticker on the back of the Subaru suggested. The faded green Outback was parked next to my 2025 Kawasaki Versys 650 LT outside the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR. The sticker was somehow appropriate, as we had come all this way to see the biggest bird of them all: the Spruce Goose.

Resting comfortably inside a purpose-built glass and steel structure, Howard Hughes’ creation stretched out across the room. The plane towers over you like an apartment building at 80 feet tall and with a 320-foot wingspan (although it’s been shortened to fit the plane in the museum). Officially known as the H-4 Hercules, it was built during World War II, but didn’t make its inaugural flight until November 1947. Hughes built the H-4 hoping to transport troops across the Atlantic, but myriad problems prevented the “heavy transport flying boat” from fulfilling its destiny.It flew once, in the final months of 1947—70 feet off the water, at 135 mph, for 26 seconds.

It took a barge, train, and semi-trucks to transport the Spruce Goose from Long Beach to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, a journey that took 138 days and covered 1,055 miles.

One Big Bird

We had started the day at Violet Suites PDX, a boutique hotel in Portland. Kyra had opted to ride the all-new Ninja 500 and picked an inspired path south to McMinnville, where the old bird has sat on display since 1993. We traveled out of the city on US 26, through the outer edge of the Oregon wine country on SW Scholls Ferry Rd, and onto SR 210, just south of Beaverton, an affluent suburb of Portland by most accounts.

Motorcycles & Gear

2025 Kawasaki Versys 650 LT
2025 Kawasaki Ninja 500

Helmet: Shoei NeoTec II
Jacket: Alpinestars Gravity Drystar Jacket
Pants: Alpinestars Copper V2 Plus Denim Pants
Boots: Danner Quarry Boots
Gloves: Aerostich Elk Skin Roper
Luggage: Kawasaki Panniers
Comm System: Cardo Packtalk Edge

This route looked enticing since our planning sessions. SR 219 runs north-south from Woodburn to Hillsboro, crossing SR 99W in Newberg. It is scribbled across the landscape north of Newberg like a child’s chalk drawing on concrete, twisting and turning back on itself, then shooting south straight into town. The twisty bit was brief but satisfying. Evergreen was everywhere, trees cloaked in an emerald coat of moss and loose leaves. The two-lane highway offered us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the machines we’d be riding for the next few days. Unladen with luggage, the Versys 650 felt both light and nimble, if not ever so slightly underpowered when rolling on the throttle when exiting corners. Kyra was keeping up, though, riding comfortably in an upright position aboard the Ninja 500.

The Pacific Northwest’s timber industry on full display. We made a quick stop along the Columbia River to appreciate the scale of the logs harvested from this region.

We took our time, passing Scholls and numerous wineries, which hoped to entice us with their offerings. After gawking at the Spruce Goose, we plotted our return trip to Portland, which required a bit of backtracking along SR 99W to Dundee. From there, we split off west to Furioso Vineyards to see what the Willamette Valley had to offer.