Our trip was very fun, but not without adventure!..We left Tacoma about 6 a.m. on Friday and got home late last night(Monday). We rode over 1100 miles in that time!!
Our destination was Joseph Oregon for the Bronze,Blues and Brews festival- the town has 3 foundries and there are bronze statues all through the streets- amazing!!
The music was incredible and the crowd was well behaved even thought there was ALOT of beer drinking going on, there were 15 micro-breweries represented.Organic beer is yucky, just so you know!!..ick!
The ride down was where the adventure took place,a little bit of rain in Yakima cleared right up..but as we got further into the day, we could see lots of lightening and rain tunnel looking things from the sky to the ground!..our route went right through them. It was about 5 or so and the skies opened up and dumped with the lightening and thunder and buckets of rain. We had no where to go, we were out in the middle of farmland!!..scarey and vulnerable!! Finally we came across a modular home and a garage and pulled in- no one was home, so we stood against their metal garage and got a small amount of shelter. That is when the torrential rain started along with gusts of wind and then HAIL that was the size of quarters!!..it lasted at least 1/2 hr and we got soaked to the skin-and pounded by hail..the temperature dropped too with the hail. It finally let up a little and we had to keep going..we were about 100 miles from our destination..fast forward thru the cold wet ride about 50 miles and we get within 50 miles of our hotel and find out there were many mudslides and the only road thru there was closed due to the mud and trees down!!!..waaa!!..now it was 7:00 or so and FREEZING cold and we had to turn around and ride to Lewiston Idaho to stay the night...I was shaking uncontrolably and we were all hideously miserable..altho our friends have heating riding gear (guess what Roger and I will have before our next long ride) and we rolled into a hotel about 9 or so, soaked to the skin and muddy as hell. Thankfully they had room!..we cleaned up and had a nice dinner (and a few drinks) and got up Saturday and made it the rest of the way to the festival with no more problems, other than riding bikes that looked like we had been 4 wheeling on them!! We ended up riding 500 miles and about 14 hours that day- whew!!
The rest of the trip was nice sunny weather and lots of fun, beautiful scenery, good music and food and wonderful times with friends!..guess Im not such a wimp after all..lol!!
4 comments:
Wow, what an adventure. That's probably one of the things I dislike the most...not being able to change out of wet, cold clothes!
That is quite the adventure! I'm glad to hear the entire weekend wasn't a waste. Love the statue!
Definitely NOT a wimp! Sure sounds like an adventure :)
yikes! a cool and memorable adventure tho! Ü
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