Wes Malinchock
This morning I woke up inside on a mattress! Thanks to our hosts, the Bacons, and their amazing bike hostel along our route we woke up feeling refreshed and ready to finish Tiger Pass. It is a much smaller climb than the previous passes in the Cascades (I actually didn't even know it counted as a pass until someone told me at the bottom), but as we had seen when we started it the day before the roads were steeper than any we had seen before!
We rode 24 miles up the pass to breakfast at Beaver Lodge, where we found some kind of motor cross event going on. However, we were too hungry to ask questions and went into the cafe for an ample breakfast. After breakfast it was only a few more miles until we hit a great winding downhill section into the Pend Oreille River valley. This section may have been my favorite so far with lots of hair pin turns followed by steep, straight sections. What a decent!
The westward blowing flag in this picture is the real stop sign for an eastbound biker
In the valley we were met with our first real head winds of the trip. We all took turns pulling the crew up the valley until we got to Newport right on the Idaho border. It's pretty astounding to me that we were able to knock out the Cascades and Washington in only ten days. Going into the trip I was dreading this section and I am glad to be sitting just a couple hundred feet from the Idaho border in our campground tonight. I know Idaho and Montana will bring more challenges with the Rockies and more sparsely spread towns, but I am excited to see what tomorrow has in store for us!