Waking up early is easy when you're camping off the side of the road! I got up a little after 6am and was quick to pack up and get moving even though I didn't get the best sleep last night thanks to repeated animal harassment.
Once I got all my panniers packed and on the bike I found out that my kickstand was broke. It clamped onto the back of my chainstay and seatstay, but cracked and could no longer hold up my bike. I had never used a kickstand on my bike until this trip but found myself using it almost every time I jumped off the bike, it was so nice not having to hunt for something to lean my bike against. Oh well, I'm close enough to the end of my trip where it's not a big deal, I removed it and threw it in a pannier to trash later.
Today's riding consisted of 2 hills with about 3,000ft of climbing between them. I started early enough that it was pretty cool out while I climbed the first hill, and stopped at a rather windy rest stop on the top to eat my left over Thai food, which was a pretty good motivator to get up the hill.
Down I went as I enjoyed the views of wheat fields being harvested on the rolling steep hills. I stopped to take several pictures as this was new to me, I was used to seeing flat wheat fields but nothing like these, trucks and farming equipment going up these steep hills to harvest.
The second hill wasn't as high as the first but because it was later in the day it was much hotter and that seemed to slow me down and made it feel like the hill was a lot longer than it probably was.
Once I got over the hill, it was downhill into Dayton. The Irish couple I met yesterday said they were staying with a warmshowers host in town and I had emailed them asking if they could fit in one more cyclist and they said sure. I rolled into Dayton at 3pm and decided to hit up the library in case the host didn't have a computer I could use. I spent 2 hours there updating my blog until the library closed and then left to find the host's house.
But a problem arose! They hadn't listed their address on warmshowers nor sent it to me in their email replay. I knew the host's name was Genie C, so I googled Genie & Dayton WA, which brought me to a cyclist's blog, where I found out her last name and husband's name. I put her husband's name in a white pages lookup website and found one result that lived in Dayton.... Probabily for success - More than I started with.
I rode over to the address and struck gold, it was her! Genie and Fred were awesome hosts, we chatted until about 7:30pm waiting for the Irish cyclists to show but they hadn't so we dug into a wonderful dinner that left me more than stuffed. As it was getting dark we saw two cyclists in the distance, it was Johannes and Rebecca!
They had to hit up a bike shop in Clarkston so they hadn't started until 1pm and rode straight through the hottest part of the day. Rebecca looked drained but after they both got showers and some food they perked up a bit. We all called it an night at about 9:30pm and I passed out on a futon, very happy to sleep indoors again!
Start: 8 miles past Clarkston, WA
End:
Dayton, WA
Distance: 62.57 miles
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