77 miles today in over 100 degree heat.  During our rodeo adventure last night we met Sarah and Walter who recommended an alternate route to the East that (1) avoided a lot of the intense climbing that awaited us and (2) took us through some very pretty high mountain pastures on very quiet roads. Competing with trucks and RVs on the highways (two lane state roads) is nerve racking and the noise annoying so the opportunity to get where we were going in more relaxed conditions was very appealing. Unfortunately, their route out of Tonasket started with 12 miles of Granny gear climbing so it wasn’t all a cakewalk.  The reward was breakfast at Sarah and Walter’s beautiful mountain home – 160 acres on top of a mountain that they handcrafted (Walter was a doctor and Sarah a Physician’s Assistant so it’s not like they had a lot of free time to build this house!) themselves while also raising their family. We took a long morning break and reluctantly got back on the road.

Breakfast view

The route was exactly as billed and after a pretty challenging climb, we began following another river so we had a fair amount of downhill for the rest of the day (with one painful exception). We stopped by a mountain lake and jumped in fully clothed just to cool off. We eventually joined the Kettle River road that follows that river downward. It actually flows north for a bit into Canada and will reemerge into the US on our trek tomorrow.

We had our passports but had to wait while they vetted us since we hadn’t been into Canada in over 22 years! But we made it in and are staying the night in a real hotel (no tent tonight).

Tomorrow will be a relatively short 88 km (we are in Canada remember) to a bike hostel in Colville, Washington, and we will rejoin our planned route and maps.