Colin:
We started out of twisp bright and early hitting the road around 7 am. After a short ride through the valley as a nice warm up we began up loup loup pass. Scraggley pines and the yellow methow flowers for which the valley was named populated the mountsides along the road. This pass was much lower than rainy and washington so we never encountered snow and reached the top at 9:30.
Following a fun, winding descent into okanogan we began to pass larger farms. We continued along this valley as the day grew hotter passing through a couple of small towns and the colville reservation.
We ate lunch in a drainage ditch by the side of the road and continued on passing through another town. I had to replace a tube on carols bike and then we pushed on along the highway into tonasket.
We had agreed to stop at the first likely spot for water as i had finished both bottles in the hot dusty conditions, and were fortunate that the spot was Shannon's. We bought some ice cream, signed the guest book (apparently as their first cross-country tourists of the year - they get over 5000 cyclists a year!) and settled down to decide whether to get a start on wauconda pass while we had daylight or to stay in town. Although we both felt good and it was not yet 3 pm, an invitation to pitch our tent in shannons yard sealed it and we settled in for the evening. We were eventually joined by a man heading from missoula to anacortis so we had some pleasant company for an evening sitting in the grass and trading both routing advice and tales from the road.
64 miles.
320 miles total.
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