Last night we charted a course to ride a paved road to our next destination. We started riding at 6am. We were SO thankful for the nice, flat surface! It was the straightest road I've ever seen, but it was totally one of those rolling hill countrysides. We had several hills to climb and each time we topped one, there were two more in sight . . . and as the day went on, the hills seemed to get bigger and bigger! Overall, there were only a couple monster hills with some bite to it, mostly they were just long. The best part was going down the other side. Oh yes! Everytime we went up, we went down! At one point, my spedomoter registered 30 mph and I was braking. It was so awesome to go down those long, rolling hills; even if we had to pedal up the next one. The hills were so long, it seemed like it was never going to end, and I kept from looking up as much as possible to keep from feeling overwhelmed with the enmormity of going uphill. At halfway, we stopped for a long rest in the shade of a huge barn. There was a side door into the barn open, so I peeked in and staring back at me was a HUGE owl sitting up in the rafters. I must have scared him as much as he scared me . . . he took one look at me, spread his wings and soard out a window. It was an amazing sight to see him so close. Everything went pretty well today. We got started early like we wanted to. The heat came up later morning, but we were finished riding around 11:15am. We logged 44.5 miles. So we have just now accomplished 100 miles.
We have decided to bag riding in the desert type terrain. Riding on the paved road is fine, but when the heat comes up and there's no civilization in sight, let alone a tree, it just is too much for us. The heat is exhausting. We've also been told that there is an unusual heat wave passing through, so we need to be able to shelter ourselves from the sun. The trail on the western half of WA is upkept by the state parks system and is supposed to be in good condition. We'll find out tomorrow!
Later today, we were able to find a bike shop to fix Zak's bike, so he'll be with us tomorrow. I think he's happy about that . . .
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