Date: Sunday, 14 August 2016
Time on Bike: 7:01:00
Total Travel Time: 11:24:16
Miles Covered Today: 82.42
Total Trip Miles: 2,000.9
Average Speed: 11.7, Maximum Speed: 35.8
From: Usk, WA
To: Colville, WA
(Uploaded on 24 Aug 2016)
I loaded everything up from the Antler Motel in Newport, WA and Bunny & Woz drove me up the road to meet the gang. Things had worked out well for them. No one got busted. No one got thrown in jail! They had their hot showers and Wi-Fi so they were ready to hit the road when I arrived!
We continued to follow LeClerc Road north along the Pend Oreille River. It was a very scenic route.
It was a cool morning, so we were all enjoying the ride and the views.
We were surprised to pass the man that shared his RV site last night with the gang. He is from Texas. I made the mistake of telling him I went to Texas A&M. Of course he was a Texas grad!! Oil & water! Anyway, he told us we needed to stop and see the Manresa Grotto that was up the road. We did!
The Manresa Grotto has been a holy site to the Kalispel Indians for thousands of years. There is an alter at the front of the grotto and rocks lines up like chairs in the back.
That has not stopped a cross from being planted on top of the hill above the grotto…
We soon met a cyclist going east.
Philip was from Tennessee and was “only” riding to Minnesota. He had left Anacortes, WA on Tuesday and had done 2 passes a day for two days!! BTW, we were planning to do one pass a day over four days!! So that was ~400 miles in 6 days with two days of brutal climbing. This guy is tough!! He added that he now regretted doing it that way and was taking tomorrow off as a rest day. Smart man!
Oh… he warned us he had seen a Mountain lion (cougar) up the road. OK we said…
We continued biking this beautiful road.
Still following the river.
We came to the Ione Bridge and left the Pend Oreille River for the last time.
I hung back and caught Rachel crossing the bridge.
We went off route a bit and headed into Ione to eat.
We knew we had our first real climb coming up and needed to refuel. We met up with Bunny & Woz who had staked out the only place in town to eat.
The Block Bar-n-Grill was opening at noon just as we walked in!
One employee to take your order, make your food, and ring you up… it took a while to get out of there! But everyone (except Woz) got fed before the climb.
Carl & Jenn wanted ice cream so we headed over to the local Super. I went in to look around. It had everything from camping supplies, to DVD rentals, to shovels.
Somehow between lunch and ice cream, we were in Ione for almost 2.5 hours! Ouch! Needed to get going! We had some climbing to do.
We retraced our steps and took a right on HW 20.
Oh, Highway 20…
We would essentially be on HW 20 for the remainder of my bike trip... for the next 6 days!! All the way to Anacortes, WA, the final destination of the northern Tier Bicycle Route.
And we would be doing a hell of a lot of climbing.
From http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jun/19/native-american-influence-indelible-along/
This little ~1,000 foot bump (first blip above to the right just after Ione) was just an appetizer. A warm up if you will for the big climbs to come! From east to west, we had:
1) Sherman Pass, a 23-mile ride to cross this 5,575 foot summit with ~4,000 feet of climbing.
2) Wauconda Pass, a 17-mile ride to cross this 4,310 foot summit with ~2,000 feet of climbing.
3) Loup Loup Pass, a 18.5-mile ride to cross this 4,020 foot summit with ~3,000+ feet of climbing.
4) Washington Pass, a 18-mile ride to cross this 5,477 foot summit with ~3,500 feet of climbing.
One pass a day for the next four days. And I was worried about crossing the Continental Divide at Logan. Ha!!!
This “bump” took us about 40 minutes to scale. I estimated it was only about 5 miles of climbing. That is what the sign said too…
It was my first climb together with the gang. They had a lot more weight to carry with all their stuff. And I noticed our gearing was different. They had lower gears! I would spin away and climb away from them. To stay with them I had to zig-zag on the road. But that made for more climbing!!
It was a nice climb with a great view of the valley below.
The road switched back on itself.
We were in the Colville National Forest and we found cows grazing off the side of the road. Rachel didn’t even look winded as she passed a few!!
Carl would talk to all the animals as I liked to do. They didn’t answer him either!
A cyclist fully loaded with gear came ripping down the climb we were doing and yelled “you are doing great!" I could have sworn I saw a cooler strapped to his handlebars!!!!
We took a break at a lake just off the road on… Little Pend Oreille River!!!!
We had a freshly paved road to ride on and we rolled down it!
Stopped at Crystal Falls for some pics.
and continued on our way.
It was a great ride. We took some back roads with our day’s goal of Colville not too far up the road.
Bunny & Woz were already checked in at the Colville Inn. I rode with the gang to the Fairgrounds in town. They secured a place to camp for the night and I cycled over to the hotel.
It was a long day... almost 12 hours in the saddle. And it was a hot day- at 7:06 PM it was still 94 degrees!
What I didn’t know until I recorded my ride data from the day late that night is that I had passed 2,000 miles today! We did more miles than I had expected, so the odometer rolled over 2,000 somewhere between where I left the gang at the Fairgrounds and my hotel. Rats!! Missed it!
The hotel had a hot tub that I made use of. We decided to hit the road really really early tomorrow (5 AM!!!) to beat the heat. We would bike the 10 miles or so and have breakfast in Kettle Creek before starting our ascent of Mt. Sherman.
More pictures from today's ride... a lot of them, as it was a beautiful day!
