Introducing Mount Doom

We left Anacortes and headed south for our first ferry of the trip to get over to the Olympic Peninsula. The narrow winding roads were really busy and really not much fun to ride along but before long we were viewing some stunning scenery and enjoying a break on a low wall looking over the water. Our next task was to race over the narrow bridge at Deception Pass where we were lucky to find a rare break in the traffic so we didn't feel like we were holding up any vehicles. This is where we bumped into two other cycle tourists that had just started their trip down to Mexico from the Canadian border. We traveled together for a few miles but couldn't really chat because of the road situation and before long went our separate ways. We carried on down to the Coupeville ferry (that in fact leaves from Keystone) and boarded without any fuss and headed across the water over to the peninsula.

We had scheduled a pretty short day so when we arrived in Port Townsend we had some food in a little diner and watched the boats in the harbor before heading up to our host for the evening, Lys. Lys, and her husband Dan, had co-organised the first TransAmerican cycle in 1976, the bikecentennial, with the folks from the Adventure Cycling Association (Greg and June). Lys and her brother Dan showed us around their amazing garden that was producing a huge amount of fruit and vegetables. Dan, her husband, was working away but there was another cycle tourist staying for the night, an American called Peter. He had started in Boston, MA and had cycles down the East coast, west across Texas and had headed north along the Pacific Coast. We traded war stories regarding climbs, mechanical issues and the dreaded wind and since we were all heading across Canada starting in Vancouver we got contact details and said goodnight.

In the morning we left just after Peter and aimed for the main highway towards Port Angeles. Again it was a short day in the saddle for us because we wanted to pick me up a new waterproof jacket since the one I came away with had pretty much given up the ghost and needed to stock up on food because we had planned 5 nights of camping. The highway down to Blyn was fine, as far as highways go. A wide shoulder and no steep climbs. Once we got to Blyn, Lys had told us about the Olympic Discovery Trail that was pretty much completely paved all the way to Port Angeles. The trail was good but when you join at Blyn it is fairly wiggly with some short, sharp climbs but this is soon tamed and it's a gentle cycle in Sequim. While cycling through Sequim we were told that there was road works on a bridge and that we needed to get back on the main highway to Port Angeles. This we did and just outside of Port Angeles and we met a cyclist out for a ride that helped us rejoin with the trail.

In Port Angeles we decided to go to the supermarket first to have some lunch and buy the food for the coming days.  While we were loading our bikes with the newly bought sustenance a woman came over to say "I saw you guys earlier and I just wanted to shake your hands and wish you luck.  It'll get better", this took us completely by surprise because the riding had been really quite easy, the sun was out.  It took a couple of seconds to realise that she thought that we were homeless, which we are but out of choice.  It took us back a bit and didn't quite know what to say, maybe I do need to start shaving again?  From here we found me a nice new, blue waterproof jacket, however this does mean that Sophie and I are pretty much in matching kit if it rains.  With food and clothing purchased we started our climb up to the Heart of the Hills campground at the foot of the climb to Hurricane Ridge.

If you had asked us 3 months ago if we wanted to do a 17 mile climb to a summit 3,573 feet above us just to have a look around and then ride back down we would have probably just laughed, but here we were planning just that to climb up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park.  We decided to spend the night in the campground at the base of the climb so that we could leave early and get it done.  We managed to find a nice site that had some free firewood so got to lighting a fire.  This was also the first opportunity to play with the new MSR Whisperlite that Chris had been unable to get to work.  After a good few moments fiddling on and a few more cleaning with the "pokey thing" we managed to get a roaring blue flame.  It was really exciting to get this to work after wanting one for such a long time and being insanely lucky to have met some amazing people that have gifted us one.  With the roaring, temperamental flame who's settings seem to be 'volcanic hot' or 'fire's of Hell hot', quickly boiling any liquid we throw on top of it in a bubbling, spluttering fury we decide to nick name the device "Mount Doom".  

Goodbye Mountains, Hello Pacific and an Exciting New Bit of Kit

The drive over Lolo Pass was wonderful, I felt sad we weren't riding it, but we didn't really have any other choice so what are you going to do?  Rick and Mary's house was incredible, loads of beautiful wood inside and amazing views including of the Osprey nest.  After unloading everything from the truck we chatted away and then they suggested we go for pizza in Winthrop which is a cute tourist town done in the Wild West theme with both the Chewuch and Methow rivers flowing through.  Mary offered to take us to the bike shop in the truck the next morning so we could set off straight from there rather than tooing and froing to their place.

As the bike shop didn't open until 9:30 we had an easy morning eating breakfast and talking about all sorts.  Rick kindly made us a couple of extra holes in our belts as they weren't doing much good any more!  After the 5 minute drive to Methow Cycle & Sport we said goodbye to Mary, got the new tire fitted, popped the new inner tube as we'd pinched it between the rim and the tire (more haste, less speed and all that), fitted a second new inner tube and got on our way.  We decided to call in at the store at Mazama about 14 miles away for our first break and had delicious chocolate and almond croissants.  There were lots of other riders about, our first encounter with so many cyclists for ages, although all these bikers looked like they were out for the day not touring.

From Mazama we had the long climb up to Washington Pass, about 18 miles away, then a little downhill and then up over Rainy Pass 5 miles after.  Mostly it was slow and gradual and pretty much the kind of climb we'd got used to, though there were a few somewhat steeper sections.  We stopped to look at our map and see how we were getting on and were heartened to see we were getting close to the top, but passing some people stopped at the side of the road I asked 'do you know if we're close to the top' and their answer was 'no', 'er no, you don't know or no, we're not near the top?' 'you're not near the top'.  Not the answer I was hoping for.  Oh well, keep pedalling.  The views back down the valley were impressive and the view up what I think was Liberty Bell Mountain was imposing.  Shortly after we spied what looked suspiciously like a summit sign and my hopes grew I pointed it out to Tom who said 'nah, don't think so'.  But I was right!  Woohoo!  We'd made the summit!  We stopped for lunch and got harangued by birds, but managed to eat ok.  Since we had another climb shortly we decided against putting on our extra layers for the mini descent we were about to ride, but even 3 miles of downhill at five and a half thousand feet, above the snow line, is flipping cold.  Still it was bearable and we were soon heading up again to Rainy Pass.  We soon summited that too and then layered up for the 'impossibly long downhill' we were now rewarded with.

Our destination was Colonial Creek Campground another 28 miles down the road.  A long fun descent was somewhat marred by a headwind striking up, still we were getting along fine.  We passed a sign saying 'Severe Side Winds for the Next 27 Miles' - oh great! My favourite!  But it wasn't so bad and I joked they'd not been to Utah.  Nearing the campsite the wind decided to show me it was no joke and the side winds really got to shoving us about.  This was not the triumphant end to the day I'd hoped, but thankfully we only had a few miles and then we arrived at our destination.  We set up the tent, ate dinner and were in bed before the kids on the neighbouring campsite.  We managed an early start the next day, excited to see the ocean again.  We stopped for our first break in Marblemount and treated ourselves to a coffee.  Amazingly we gathered a crowd, I think six people ended up talking to us, shaking our hands, giving us ice to cool down our water bottles and generally making us feel like quite a spectacle.  This was pretty funny, especially since we spotted five riders pass by on fully loaded bikes just while we stopped for break!  Our first bike tourers on the road for weeks!

The ride for the rest of the day was fairly unremarkable; good weather, mostly downhill, farmland and towns with the North Cascades disappearing from my rear view mirror.  I felt like we'd not really done this National Park justice, its such a wild place that you really need to explore on foot, driving or riding through it on the road is beautiful, but doesn't even scratch the surface.  But with limited time and inappropriate footwear I'm not sure we could have done more.  We had no idea about where we were staying that night as we'd had no luck with all the Warm Showers hosts we'd contacted and so munching our way through a 5 pack of Snickers ice creams in Burlington we finally decided we'd aim for the campground in Washington Park, Anacortes.

Pulling into the wooded campsite we were approached by an enthusiastic lady who seemed thrilled to see us.  She explained her daughter had rode across the States and asked if we would join them at their site and talk with them.  We parked our bikes, grabbed a couple of beers and our bag of crisps and wandered over to Catherine and Chris's camp.  While offering us all sorts of food Catherine gently interrogated us and tried to get hold of her daughter on the phone.  We spoke briefly to Hannah, who seemed lovely, understood the foibles of touring and thought her parents were just trying to 'repay' the kindness she'd been shown.  We'd forgotten about going to pay for our campground but when the ranger came around Catherine convinced him to let us pay the hiker/biker fee for the standard campsite we'd picked and then proceeded to pay our fee for us.  They only lived a couple of miles away but were training for a series of hikes they were going to do to into wild locations to get photos of the night sky.  They invited us to their place the next day to shower and do laundry and continue the interrogation.  Since we needed to figure out our plans for our last 10 days in the States and since we'd so enjoyed their company we took them up on the offer.

The short but decidedly uphill ride to their place brought us to incredible views over the bay towards the San Juan Islands.  Chris and Catherine have an amazing place and made us feel totally at home.  We spent the day lounging around the balcony, doing mountains of laundry and trying to figure out what to do next.  We had such a great time chatting with them and they told us more about Hannah's trip and let us have a look at the book she'd self published for her friends and family from her daily journal which was fascinating.

We were torn between spending 2-3 days on the San Juan Islands and 4-5 days getting to and around the Olympic National Park or spending all our time at the National Park.  Chris and Catherine suggested that the National Park was more wild and interesting, so decision made.  We contacted a Warm Showers host in Port Townsend and planned to get going by lunch the next day to make the forty-something mile journey in the afternoon.  Chris made us a delicious chilli for dinner and we talked for hours.  He's an ER doc and has done all sorts of interesting things including a stint being the doctor for an expedition up Everest.  He didn't climb to the summit but spent weeks up in the Himalayas, around Base Camp and higher and that's pretty damn amazing in my book.

The next morning after breakfast we were getting packed up to go and they gifted us the most generous of things.  They gave us an MSR Whisperlite International.  This probably doesn't mean a lot to some of you, but this is the stove I'd been coveting for a while, however since we had our cheap and functioning gas stove couldn't really bring ourselves to fork out for this bit of kit, although we were thinking we'd need to soon as it burns pretty much any liquid fuel so is ideal in places with no camping shops (rural Canada, Central and South America).  I protested, it was too big a gift, I wouldn't have expected something like this from our families, let alone from people we'd met about 40 hours ago.  Catherine sternly told me not to tell a 65 year old woman what to do and that they had new stoves and would love it to get a good home with us.  I nearly cried.  This is a huge gift, incredibly useful and a massive saving for us.  We went outside for a quick lesson on how to use it.  This did not go to plan, but better to know now that we needed to tinker with it to get it to work than fire it up for the first time with no other cooking options and be disappointed.  Still gobstruck we thanked them profusely, said our goodbyes and headed off down the road.

Snowy Mountain Passes and Tire Issues

The rest day at the Bacon Bike Hostel was well taken and it was fantastic to just chill out just the two of us for the day. The morning after we got up early to get some miles under our belt before the first of five mountain passes in four days. Unsurprisingly as we were now in the notoriously wet state of Washington we loaded the bikes in the rain and headed out to join the Adventure Cycling Association's Northern Tier route which follows Highway 20 all the way west to the ocean.  Since the trip began we have had very few wet days and you can forget how miserable it can get. Low visibility, invisible water filled pot holes and tidal waves of road spray from passing trucks all added to low moral and frustration. It feels important to add that even though we are from equally wet England, Sophie and I have very little wet weather gear. We have waterproof jackets and socks, and Sophie has some waterproof "Chilly Grips" (fleece lined, outdoor rubberised farming gloves) but my gloves are not even water-resistant and seem to just get drenched and chilly pretty quickly. We had been forewarned that the first pass (Sherman Pass) was the worst of the climbs but looking online it wasn't as bad as some of the other summits we'd climbed so when the junction came to turn onto the scenic byway we were fairly confident if a little waterlogged.

The climbing on Sherman pass was not the problem with the day. The issue was two fold. Firstly the dense forest and low lying cloud meant that there was no stunning vista to distract you from the pedalling so all your mental energy was focussed on the mile markers and time. So all I thought about what how far we had come and how far was still to go. How fast we were travelling and what time that meant we were planning on getting to the top; this slows the world right down and quite soon I found myself focusing on every turn of the crank arm. The second issue was my so called waterproof and breathable jacket. It was failing spectacularly on both fronts resulting in my body and arms being dripping wet and cold. As we climbed and the rain turned to sleet then snow my body temperature was dropping and head to toe I was drenched. At the summit sign the visibility was down to about 30-40 feet and the standard achievement photo was forgotten as we hurriedly prepared for the long downhill to Republic. 

From bitter experience we knew that as bad as the climbing was the downhill would be worse. The normal joy of screaming down the hill at speeds of 35mph is replaced with screaming obscenities as the cold fingers become numb and quickly agonising. And the long, sweeping descent from Sherman Pass was no different to the retreat on Boulder Mountain back in Utah, however this time there was no definite safe haven to warm up in and the descent was so much longer. As we rolled closer into town a bald eagle swooped low over us and followed the road for a brief distance meaning we could get fantastic views of the amazing bird. My sentimental mind took this as a sign that it'll be alright and that we were doing well and keep following the road; the cold can do funny things to one's mind. We arrived with our Warm Showers host after not too long and were welcomed with a lovely warm house and home cooked fish and chips.

DiAnne was a great host and looked after us when we arrived. The food was brilliant and her stories of cycling and her holidays were great. We left with dry clothes feeling rejuvenated and ready for our second climb, over Wacaunda Pass, towards the ocean. The weather for the climb wasn't brilliant but nowhere near as bad as the previous day and the scenery was much more inviting so it wasn't too long before we reached the top and were enjoying the downhill towards Tonasket.  We stopped at this little town for lunch and headed off towards Omak to stock up on supplies for the next few days as our food bag was running low.  Our routine for shopping is that Sophie does the shopping while I guard the bikes.  I think we both think the other person has the better task but we only have the one card which is Sophie's, so she gets to look at all the pretty things and walk around the aisles talking to all the wonderful people while I'm stuck outside dealing with whatever the weather can throw at me.  However, during this ordeal in Omak a guy came over and started talking about cycle touring and our trip, he was in a bit of a rush to buy a few things for his lunch but it was nice all the same to interact with somebody.  The next thing I knew he was back out the shop and presented me with a host of things to eat; then he ran off to what ever he was up to.  Soph came out a little later and we headed off to our destination of Okanogan.

We arrived with Heather, from Warm Showers, just before she was heading out for dinner with friends and we had a brief chat about the birds in the area, about her job and how to use the hot tub. Oh yeh, that's right, Heather had a hot tub and while she was out we had a nice long soak resting our tired legs and enjoying all the amazing wildlife.  The next morning we rose early and started getting ready for the next mountain pass.  While loading Sophie's bike I noticed Sophie had a flat; no worries, a quick change was all that was needed.  Loading my bike I noticed a gash in my tire wall; bigger problem.  We don't carry any spare tires and had no way of fixing it so we needed to buy a new one.  A rushed journey to the local bike shop proved fruitless.  How were we going to sort this?  A quick message conversation with Heather resulted in finding a better shop in the next town over plus the offer of a place today stay and a lift there from a work colleague.  Winning.  The stress of it all meant that we needed a nice long soak in the hot tub; all's well that ends well.

Finisterre Gear Review

We have a few bits of clothing from Finisterre with us on our tour and we love them. We just wanted to write a quick review of their stuff. To begin with Finisterre are a cold water surfing company based in Cornwall, England. Although we aren't cold water surfing we think that clothes that can survive in those harsh environments can look after us on our trip.

We both have their woollen socks (Sophie has the "Last Long Original Socks" and I wear the "Last Long Ribbed Socks") - these little things are the best! When it's cold we wear them riding, they keep our toes warm in bed when we're camping and it's below zero, and they are our go to option when off the bikes and just walking around in our light weight Crocs. Despite the fact that mine must be over 2 years old they are near enough perfect (if a little grubby). Well done Finisterre, these socks are awesome!

Putting on the Last Long Original Woollen Socks

I have one of their cotton polo shirts, maybe it was called the Harlyn? This is now maybe 18 months to 2 years old and is one of my favourite T-shirts (hence being away with us) and is still in perfect nick. Again - awesome!

Wearing the Harlyn organic cotton polo shirt

We both have their merino wool Eddy base layers, these are our go to tops when we need something more than just a cycling jersey or T-shirt. Our only minor criticism here is that we'd prefer them to be slightly longer in the body, but again these are built for surfing and not cycling so we shouldn't complain. Still it's a great bit of kit and has helped save us from freezing on a couple of snowy mountain passes! Not sure how we would have coped in Utah or Washington without them.

Keeping the chill off in the desert with the Eddy Merino Base Layer

I also have the Nimbus synthetic down jacket that I asked for as a 30th birthday/leaving pressie from all my family. I love the jacket! It's brilliant, it looks great, it's warm, it is surprisingly water resistant, it packs up small and I wrap it around a stuff sack full of clothes to use it as a super-duper pillow. It is awesome after a long day in the saddle to throw on while putting up the tent and getting the camp set up. It seems to keep me the right temperature - when it's cold it seems really warm and toastie, but if its not so chilly I don't overheat and get uncomfortable.  A nice touch is the soft lining in the pockets and around the neck that is a welcome luxury at the end of the day. I went for the hooded version (there is the Cirrus that comes without the hood) and I'm really glad I did for those cold desert nights gazing at the stars or the biting, frosty mornings getting the porridge ready for breakfast.  Although it's not waterproof it's water resistance keeps rain beading off it to stop it getting damp.  This is my first insulated jacket so I can't really do a comparison but I can't seem to find any flaws with the jacket after 3 months of wearing.   

Keeping warm in the forest in the Nimbus Jacket

All of the above have survived being rolled up and stuffed into dry bags day after day after day.  Some times all (barring the Nimbus jacket) have been wet for days and just packed away and still, once washed and dried out, the clothes keep their shape and carry on keeping us warm (I keep the Nimbus from rain because even though it is water resistant to a point, I personally don't want to have my evening luxury clothing all wet, that would result in a massive disappointment after a long ride).  We've even had to resort to putting the wool socks and base layers into big tumble driers to get them dry on numerous occasions with no ill affect to the garments.  The durability of these items are fantastic and we are both so glad we decided to bring these items away.

Planning on a Century Ride

Leaving Coeur D'Alene on a Monday morning we were sat in pretty rough traffic for a while, but soon enough we were onto the quieter roads heading north.  There is a Bike Hostel in Colville, WA, that we had decided to make our destination for the night.  It was 107 miles away.  This was just about the furthest we would have rode in a day and the other times we'd done similar distances we'd done it by accident.  This might sound funny, but psychologically the last few miles are always the worst, hence why when we don't have a destination we can push on bit further.  Setting out to do 107 miles you don't have the luxury of that, you're focussed on the end point and this tends to shift perspective on the whole ride.  Still, we were up for it.  We'd be crossing into Washington, our last state, and we were going to have a lazy rest day at the hostel, watching The Wire and not doing much else.  We made it to Newport/Old Town on the Idaho-Washington border by around noon, but there was no state sign welcoming us to our eighth and final state.  Pretty gutted we continued on towards a random point we'd decided to have lunch at.  The border was about 45 miles from Rachel and Donnie's and we wanted to make it to at least roughly halfway for lunch.

We pulled over to check the map and this is when we realised the route I had checked on googlemaps was actually taking us on a load of forest service roads over the hills.  Not good.  We couldn't even find them on the Pocket Earth maps on Tom's phone.  If we stayed on the road it would add another 20 miles on, way too far for us to ride in a day.  We found another road on the paper state map that went up past a ski area and managed to find this on phone too.  We weren't sure what the road would be like, but it was our best shot as it only added 2-3 miles making the total ride just shy of 110 miles.  We stopped for lunch.  I was feeling pretty pissed off with myself for missing the fact google had sent us on some crazy tracks when I was planning the route.  It started raining.  Off course it did, this is Washington and we'd been warned about the rain.  Raincoats on we finished our lunch and got going again.  At the junction for us to turn up towards the ski area and Chewelah beyond I asked a driver coming from that way what the road was like.  Steep but paved.  This was excellent news, we could cope with that.  I just didn't want us up a mountain, in the rain, pushing our bikes through mud on some rough track.

The climb was fine, not so steep, but pretty long and the worst part was that as we were travelling slowly we were at the whims of the swarms of mosquitoes.  It's the first time we'd encountered them on the trip and they were so aggravating.  Luckily before too long we'd climbed high enough that they were no longer a problem.  We passed the sign for the ski area and knew we must be nearing the summit.  At the top we put on extra layers for the descent and started bombing our way down to Chewelah.  I think this might have been my favourite downhill of the trip, its definitely up there anyway.  Hardly any traffic, not freezing cold, not too steep, nice sweeping corners.  The Goldilocks of downhills.  We made it in to Chewelah just before 6pm, with just over 20 miles still to go we knew we'd be cutting it fine to arrive before dark.

The road was gently undulating and we were going at a good pace considering we'd been riding for so long, turning off the highway we started climbing and winding our way through country roads up into the hills.  This was a tiring end to the day.  But the end didn't arrive.  That last 6 or 7 miles seemed to go on forever, and always climbing.  As the sun sank behind the hills we finally reached our destination. The Bacon Bike Hostel is a free place to stay, built by Shelley and Barry Bacon to help cycle tourers.  They're not cycle tourers themselves, they're just incredibly nice, generous people.  It has four rooms which can each sleep up to four people, two bathrooms and a communal kitchen/diner/living room.  Did I mention it's free?  This was our first foray back on to a well-travelled bike route since we left the West Coast, but since we were so early in the season we were the only ones staying so we had the place to ourselves.  We collapsed into bed feeling exhausted but pleased with ourselves.  We'd come a long way since those early days of running out of daylight after only doing 45 miles.

Unfortunately we'd planned our food badly and needed to go into Colville the next day or spend the day hungry.  It was only 6 miles so after a lazy morning we got on the bikes and headed for the grocery store.  We knew it was all downhill to town but jeez it was steep!  We quickly started to regret our decision, the ride back was going to be hell. We should have just holed up and not eaten.  We went wild in the supermarket buying pork chops, potatoes and veg since we had the luxury of a cooker and the ability to cook more than one thing at once.  Our salvation came in the form of Shelley offering us a lift, with our bikes, back up to the hostel.  We headed over to the little community café she volunteers at and enjoyed a soup and sandwich for lunch.  We had fun chatting to the other workers and customers and were even given a delicious vegan chocolate truffle.  Back at the hostel we made a feast for dinner and settled down for a binge session of The Wire.  Tomorrow we had to climb Sherman Pass, the first of five passes to get us to the coast and supposedly the worst of them, so we got an early-ish night so we could get a good start the following day.

Long Days, Fun Nights and Tough Mornings!

Leaving Missoula we knew our route back to the ocean but for the first few nights we had no plans on where to stay.  We were just going to rock up in to towns and ask the locals and hoped that they would know some good places to camp.  This was a bit scary because we were definitely in bear country so we'd have to make sure we followed all the rules for camping in the backcountry with bears.  Don't eat where you sleep and hang the food and other smelly stuff up a tree.  We had the know how so we were hoping to try out our skills along the way.  The first stop was a book shop in Alberton to get me a new book. Greg at the Adventure Cycling Association had told us about the shop, it was on the way so thought we should check it out. We found the Montana Valley Book Store so I headed inside to check out the books.  The woman in the store pointed me to the right section and I dove into the massive selection; meanwhile the shop owner went outside to talk to Sophie.  Keren, the shop owner, had cycled around the UK and Europe and had visited the Netherlands where her father had been shot down during the war and captured by the Germans.  She then met the man that was part of the Resistance who had tried to find him but had only found his Mae West life jacket.  Keren then went on to give me the book I was looking at and some food for the road.

We carried on bouncing between the Interstate and frontage roads heading North West towards Idaho.  At one point we ended up in the forest up a dirt track and after not much climbing I started to feel really faint.  I ended up needing to get off the bike and lie down in the dirt for a few minutes to sort myself out.  At this point we decided we should find a place to camp.  We looked around for a wild campsite but the trees were really thick and there were loads of beer cans and we were nervous about bears so we headed on down to St. Regis to ask if they knew a better place to camp.  Our first port of call was the visitor's centre but it was already closed for the night.  We next headed to the gas station and they told us about a free campground in the forest.  When asked about the bear they replied with "Yeh there are bears, best to take a gun."  Without a gun, but with our bear spray we headed into the forest to find a place to sleep.  The campground was deserted so we picked a place to camp and went to a separate area to cook and eat.  We found a place to hang all the potential bear bait and were set for the night.  As twilight was setting in we decided to make one last trip to the restroom.  On getting out of the tent, without my glasses, I looked up to see a big black shape with, what looked like, a lighter muzzle.  Without bear spray, whistle or glasses I calmly asked Sophie for my glasses.  As the fuzziness cleared I was staring straight at a log.  After a laugh and a giggle about the scary, bear shaped log we got ready for bed.

In the morning we were aiming to get on to the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes; it's a 72 mile old railway line that is completely paved.  We hoped to hop on that, follow it until we got tired and camp by the side of it.  We found one end of the trail in Mullan and had a look at the information boards about the trail.  Unfortunately, we found that although the rail trail was open for public use we were not allowed off the track because all along it was private land.  There were campsites a little off the route but the only one that was on it was at Harrison.  Harrison was pretty far so we decided to just head off and see what would happen.  After a good morning we decided to push on to Harrison.  We loaded up on supplies, found out the General Election results and headed off down to Harrison.  The Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes was an absolutely amazing  experience.  The scenery was amazing, we saw our first moose and the trail was in great condition for riding.  With all this and the wind at our backs we had a fantastic ride down to Harrison.  After setting up the tent and cooking some food we decided to head to the local bar, The Gateway Grill, for a drink to celebrate.  It'd been a great day so we felt like we deserved it; it is only one drink what is the worst that could happen.

Curled up in the fetal position with my head out the tent vomiting on the floor, I started to wonder where it all went wrong.  I remember going into the bar and ordering a drink.  We were introduced to the owner, Rex and the bar lady, Darcy.  Rex had just bought the bar and this was the start of the season, he was in high spirits and bought the bar a round of shots.  I don't think it was the first shot that was the downfall but it was the other free beers and shots that was the trouble.  We met some of the locals and had country dance lessons.  I think there was some tap dancing involved but then things go fuzzy.  All I know is that we had a great time in the bar with Rex, Darcy and the locals but the next day it hurt.  I struggled all morning but we only had a short trip to Coeur d'Alene so we set off just after lunch on a beautiful day to follow the lake up to the city.

After riding for 15 miles Sophie and I needed to sleep for two hours.  When we woke up on the benches next to the lake Sophie was feeling better but I was worse.  There was no way I would be able to make it the next 30 miles to the city.  With no other options we phoned the Warm Showers host we had planned on staying with to apologise and Sophie explained the situation.  Rachel said no problems, do we want her to come and get us?  Yes please, that would be AMAZING!!!! After getting to the rendezvous I collapsed in a heap and waited for our savior to arrive. When Rachel turned up we loaded up the truck and I focused on breathing while Sophie and Rachel chatted back to the house.  When we arrived I needed to crash for a while and disappeared into the spare room to sleep it off.  When I awoke Donnie, Rachel's boyfriend, had arrived home and I was feeling much better.

Donnie and Rachel were amazing in so many ways.  They had rented bikes for a day, had enjoyed riding around so decided to buy bikes and do the Pacific Coast Bike Route from Canada to Mexico. We couldn't believe it.  We had spent years researching and planning and they had just bought bikes and went.  Donnie then decided to do a triathlon so went and got himself swimming lessons.  The guy couldn't swim and thought he'd do a triathlon - awesome!! Donnie was now training to do a 50 miles Ultra Marathon.  These guys were brilliant!  Sophie and I had a really good evening with them and then they invited us to stay another day.  Not feeling 100% we decided to have a rest day and check out the city.

Coeur d'Alene is an amazing city.  It has a cool downtown and is right by the lake side.  When we were there the sun was blazing and the lake was buzzing with people.  We had wraps and watched the world go by along the lake front.  It was an unscheduled stop in our journey but I am so glad we met Rex and Darcy in the bar and because of that we got to spend more time with Rachel and Donnie, and check out the city and the lake.  It's fun how things work out.