Bicycling to the NWTR Victoria, BC
June & July - 2009
Saturday July 11, 2009
Leavenworth to Quincy WA
Distance 57.5 Miles
We woke up at 5:00 AM and ate a poor breakfast in our Motel room. The motel breakfast is not until 7:00 AM and we wanted to be riding the bicycle before then because the daytime temperature is expected to be in the high 80's. We were riding by 6:30 AM and it was really an easy start. For long periods we traveled at 18 to 20 miles per hour. Then just before we reached Wenatchee, we had a long granny gear hill. Once over the top we headed down a long hill. In the middle of the hill was a sign that said to exit to stay on Highway 2 to Spokane. We made the mistake of exiting the road instead of going into Wenatchee and suddenly found our selves heading north instead of south. We exited Highway 2 and then made a series of mistakes that took us in a circle where we ended up in the same place where we started. Finally we got back on the correct road and headed into Wenatchee. We traveled through Wenatchee, crossed the Columbia River to East Wenatchee and stopped at a grocery store to purchase food and take our first rest of the day.
We then headed south toward Quincy. Just after we passed the Rock Island dam on the Columbia River, our easy day ended. It was now hot and we had another steep and long hill to climb. For the next 5 miles we would go down one hill only to climb another. Finally we stopped at a Shell service station at Crescent Bar where we took another rest. We continued on our way and within a half mile we were climbing the longest and steepest climb of the day. It was well over a mile long and we had to stop and rest before we continued on to the top where we stopped at a rest stop to recover from the long climb.
Continuing into Quincy, we came to a construction area where the road had been grooved so we again rode the shoulder only this time it was covered with some of the grooving material. Finally we reached our motel, the last room in the town because of a concert at the George. This was the most expensive motel of our trip and it was the worst motel of our trip. The walls were all painted dark brown; when we entered the room we found that we did not have any soap and only one bath towel and the kitchen we paid for did not have any dishes or silverware in fact all the cabinets were nailed shut. We went looking for a place to eat lunch. The temperature was 100 degrees and we walked and walked before we found one place to eat.
| 