Northern Tier Adventure part II: Seattle to St. Paul: Day 9: To Colville, WA

Thur, Jun 1, 2017
Stats: Today - 55 miles; 451 miles to date
Elevation climbed: 4455 ft; 18,886 feet to date
Temp. Low: 50 High: about 65
No wind, cloudy, about 20 minutes of light rain

We left the campground at the Ferry County Fairgrounds at about 8:45. We started climbing immediately. Again it was steep at first, maybe five to six percent, then not so bad. While we were still on Hwy 20, we didn't have much of a shoulder the whole way up. This time we were biking to Sherman Pass. While it was only fifteen miles to the pass, only about two miles of it was level or downhill so we still had about thirteen miles of actual climbing. It's interesting that even in the "granny gears" on a mountainside you can still develop a rhythm. And so, six hours later we made it to the pass. And another opportunity to scream down a mountain, topping out at about 37 miles an hour.

At the bottom, we still had fourteen miles to our destination. That would not have been such a problem, but about one third of it was steep climbing again that we didn't realize we had.

On the way, we stopped at Walmart in Colville to buy groceries to get us through Friday's meals and Saturday's breakfast since we planned to take a day off on Friday. Then we went to eat supper and headed to our warm showers host for the next two nights.

This time our hosts, Barry and Shelley Bacon, have a building on their property (out in the country) that they have made into a bicycle hostel. It is a four bedroom hostel with kitchen, living room and laundry facilities.