Day 6 Kalaloch to Montesano

80 miles, 2,500 feet elevation gain

Today started off in typical Western Washington fashion-cloudy/foggy, temps in the 50's and the occasional drop of moisture from the sky. Rolling out of the campground, Steve flatted within one mile. Luckily, Janet arrived shortly with the Supreme SAG Getaway Van, and repairs were made in short order. It should be noted that this morning was the first morning of the entire trip in which we both started off wearing knee warmers and rain jackets.

Traffic on 101 was Sunday morning light, and in spite of the chip-seal road surface, the 30 miles to Lake Quinalt/Amanda Park went by quickly. We stopped at the Internet Cafe, where Janet uploaded our previous day's photos and blog postings. After a break, we went back to Hwy. 101's chip-seal towards Humptulips, and then to where we would leave 101 another 7 miles down the road.

We stopped at the Humptulips Grocery and each downed a quart of Gatorade. While Gatorade does not contain Ion4 like Powerade, it does seem to have a similar effect. More chip-seal pavement, and spitting rain took us to our turn off at Youmans Road. It was nice to turn off on to the quiet low speed, low-traffic road that headed east through forest land and rural homes. It was somewhat surprising to see so many homes, a grocery store, and a school in the middle of nowhere.

The riding was quite pleasant, over generally rolling terrain. Again, the road surface was chip-seal, but with the low traffic, we were able to find the smoother parts that had been packed down by cars and trucks. There was one significant hill climb-a mile or two of 10% gradient, with a little bit as steep as 12%. This climb took us out of the Wishkah River drainage into the Wynoochee drainage. After the summit of this climb, the pavement ran out and we had to negotiate a section of gravel road for a little over a half a mile. Too bad this section wasn't paved, as it would have been a great downhill with tight technical turns. Back on pavement, the road dropped us down to the Wynoochee Valley-a broad agricultural valley. Smooth pavement and a general downhill trend led us to Montesano, where we got a motel room at the Monte Square Motel (Alan and I stayed here last year on the first night of our ride to San Diego). Dinner was at the same Italian place (Geseppe's) that we stopped at last year.

We'll have breakfast tomorrow at the Beehive Restaurant, then head home. We'll ride to Bremerton, where we'll catch the ferry to Seattle, then on home. For Steve, it should be a little under 80 miles to home, for me it will be a little over 100 miles for the day. I'll post photos as soon as I can.