Friday, May 21, 2010

Day 13, 5/21/10 - Pasco to Othello, WA

Just the VERY Basics for Now: 52 miles, LOTS of hills, including a killer one with a mile and a half 7% grade descent. We climbed over 1700 feet. WHEW!

We've averaged over 50 miles a day in the last 4 days of riding, with the last two days perhaps the toughest of the trip, and we're beat! After dinner or in the morning we should have more to say.

We are taking a layover day in Othello so will be here for 2 nights. Unbeknown to us, our visit coincides with Othello's celebration of its centennial, so we should have lots to say about that.

No pictures today - it's hard to take pictures of vast fields, although they are wonderful to ride past.

And a Little Bit More:
Our ride began from the Sleep Inn Motel in Pasco which we have passed on many rides in the Tri-Cities area - almost every Saturday we biked by it on a trail to Road 68 in Pasco and breakfast at IHOP.

The entire day we cycled through agricultural areas. We saw: Potatoes, hay, wheat (we think), alfalfa, vetch (green manure), corn, cherries, grapes, peas, beans - and probably other things we didn't notice or recognize; mint is grown in the Othello area and we might have gone by some. The wildflowers were mainly wild vetch, yellow salsify and mustard.

The first hay had been cut and the wonderful smell of new-mown hay suffused the ride. It was beautiful - but (this is where we came in), the over-riding impression of the day was the effort of getting up all those hills! I think we were surprised to find it so tough - we've been riding up and down hills since we started this trip, but this day was kind of exceptional - perhaps because the day before was also grueling.

No comments:

Post a Comment