The Last Pass

I've had a ton of trouble getting these entries to post properly on the blog.  Either half the entry narrative is missing or the pictures aren't there.  I'll shorten this up and include just one picture and see how that works. If that doesn't work I'll just go with the narrative.

I think I left off after we arrived in Republic late on August 12.  On the 13th we headed out for the last pass in Washington state, Sherman Pass.  This is the highest of the four passes but we actually never went over it.  We had passed through a lot of road resurfacing work with stone laid down and then covered with oil.  All of the surfaces we road on up to then were past the oil stage and were actually quite good.  But Dean said that most of the road over Sherman Pass was covered with lose stone, which didn't sound too good for riding a bike over.  I had read about an alternate route over the pass before leaving Connecticut so we asked around and got directions to it.  It turned out to be 15-20 miles longer, but the road surface was fine.  At about 2 in the afternoon we cleared the highest point on this route at about 4800 feet.

Shortly after 2 Tom, Sam and Steve had to head back Seattle.  Sam needed to catch a flight back to Atlanta early the next morning.  It was sure great to have them along.  I would probably be at least two days farther behind if I was traveling on my own fully loaded.  Plus I got to travel on with Tom's bicycle saddle.  My saddle was killing me and so I traded with Tom a few days back.  Afterwords my saddle was killing him, but like the trooper he is he took one for the team right in the you know where.

So after Tom and the gang left Dean and I continued on and quit for the day just short of Newport.  At about 4pm we put the bike in the back of the van and headed to Spokane.

Day 4 miles: 65
Total miles: 437
Over and out,
Joe

Sent from my iPad
Sent from my iPad