So long Wenatchee! Haha, yea, thats right, Im outa here. Thanks for the fun times, but this bird's gotta fly! 90 or so miles back to Twisp on the first day. I left around 2:30 in the afternoon. After a lovely breakfast with my homies. More of a brunch really-- my homies and I like to do brunch. Twisp was in good shape, Alot like I left it, actually. I stayed with a new couch surfing buddy, Kary, and of course I hit the Cinnamon Twisp bakery again. Gotta get those carbs! The next three days were a blast. Each day I would climb up and over a mountain pass, and each night I managed to find a great campsite and some cool people. It went a little something like this...
After Twisp, I rode up and over Loup Loup pass. It was a nice day and a pretty easy ride. Going up was slow and steady, going down was fast, fun and over way too soon. I set up camp in Tonasket behind the visitor center, chatted with a few locals and ran into a nice couple who were also biking along the Northern Tier. Finished the day off watching the sunset, eating a big bag of cookies and sipping on a can of wine that I bought in Twisp and hauled over the Mts. (That's right people, a CAN of wine!) I got an early start the next morning, mostly because the sprinklers came on. And today I learned another lesson of the road: If you hear sprinklers coming on, but they are not currently spraying your section of lawn, move your stuff now, because in a few minutes the next cycle will turn on and they WILL be hitting your section of lawn. It seems like common sense, but this is exactly the sort of concept that my brain doesn't understand in the morning when I first wake up. I heard them come on across the field, but I chose to do nothing. Sure enough, 15 minutes later the cycle changed-- now I'm half dressed dragging my soaking tent across wet grass onto the parking lot. Good Morning, Tonasket!
So after everything dried out, I headed over the next pass and into Republic. For those of you who have never been to Republic WA, I would recommend it; its a cool little town. I arrived around 4:00 PM, and had a snack outside the local Co-op. What better to follow up the snack then a cold beer right? So I stopped in at the local brewery for a cold one. With in five minutes of getting my brew, I was chatting about my ride to the girl behind the counter and the people around me. Her friend has a yurt that they let passing cyclists stay in, so before I could get a second beer I had a place lined up to stay it. The Yurt was decked out with couches, a stove, a TV with built in VHS player, and a fine selection of VHS movies to go with (including a couple Nick Cage flics!) Not long after securing my yurt another local, Ellen, approached me and invited me to join her and her friends on a 'full-moon' bike ride. The basic premise: we ride our bikes up to the top of the hill where the party is already in full swing. We don costumes, having some drinks-- then, as the sun is setting, we ride down the hill, stopping at other peoples houses along the way for more fun and drinks! I had a great time, made some friends, threw back some drinks and had some laughs. Fun!
The next day, with only a slight hangover, I made it over Sherman pass; the highest pass to cross in WA (though not the steepest). Not much traffic though, which was nice. That night I camped at the Colville airport. Pretty uneventful. I wanted to go into town and find the brewery there, but I was too sleepy. The next day I rode out of Colville, toward Newport. Along the way I ran into the same couple I met in Tonasket a few days earlier; we had some lunch together and chatted for awhile. They were a cool couple. I have found that I have met some really interesting people on this trip; not 30 minutes after leaving lunch I met two other cyclitst. They were a mother-daughter team, touring since 2009 and they were carrying large stuffed animals strapped to their bikes!
That evening I was riding through a large empty strech of road, so I was going to do some serious stealth camping, but each time I stopped I got swarmed with more mosquitos then I have ever seen in my life. It was nuts. When you came to a complete stop you could hear a steady, constant, high-pitch buzzing. So I just kept riding until the sun went down. I happend to get lucky and came upon a free campground just as the sun was going down. Of course the campsite was full of frogs that kept me up all night, but whatever.
The next day I rolled into Sandpoint, which was to be my next rest point on the trip, and where I am writing this entry. I 'm staying with Paula L, a warmshowers host that I found through my man, John Myers, who stayed here last year on his trip. So far its been great. I took a much needed shower, jumped on a trampoline and I spent all of yesterday checking out the coffee shops, bakerys, and brewerys of Sandpoint. What else do you need right? And to make things even better, Paula is a foster parent for 5 kittens that she got from the pound. So I have been playing with kittens these last couple of days. Hence all the photos of kittens. (I lost the cord for my camera so I can't upload my real photos. The only new photos I can upload for the time being are off my ipod and are of me playing with kittens)
So I will probably spend another night here, resting my legs, eating large quantities of food and tomorrow I'll strike out for Missoula! More to come!
