You hear Multnomah Falls before the trees give it up, and then it is simply there: a thin white thread dropping 620 feet in two tiers off a basalt wall, with a little stone footbridge hung across the gap between them. It is the tallest waterfall in Oregon, and the car park behind it is built to match. This is not a place you have to yourself. Come on a weekday morning, outside high summer, and it feels almost private; arrive on a sunny Saturday and you will be circling for a space beside half of Portland. The stone lodge at the foot, built in the 1920s, serves meals and is a decent spot to warm up on a wet day.
The Historic Columbia River Highway is the reason a motorcyclist is here at all. Samuel Lancaster laid it out in the 1910s as a deliberate work of art, with masonry viaducts, tunnels, curved guard walls and bridges in the Roman style, because he wanted a road that belonged in the gorge instead of scarring it. Much of it was later bypassed by the interstate, which is a gift: the old alignment is slow, curling, and lined with moss-draped maple and Douglas fir, and the bits that survive are a pleasure on two wheels. Go gently on the old surfaces, which can be damp, leaf-slicked and patched, and watch for cyclists and walkers. Vista House on Crown Point, a few miles west, is worth a stop for the view up the gorge.
The falls themselves are fed by springs and snowmelt from the slopes of Larch Mountain, and the spray keeps everything around the base unreasonably green. A paved trail zigzags up to the bridge, steep enough to make you aware of motorcycle boots but short. The gorge is also famous for wind, funnelling between the Cascades, so a calm morning at the bottom does not guarantee a calm ride along the cliff-edge sections.
The falls sit right beside Interstate 84, which is how most people actually reach them, and in recent summers there has sometimes been a timed-entry system for the access road, so check before you commit. For fuel, Troutdale to the west and Cascade Locks to the east are the closest towns that sell it. Hood River, further east, is the one for a proper lunch and a brewery.