Day 1, July 18th

Start: Everett, WA

Finish: Wenatchee, WA

Miles: 128

Elevation Gain: 5690'

Motel

Orchard Inn & Super 8

1401 N Miller Street

Wenatchee, WA 98801

509-662-3443

Click on an image to see a larger view

One down and twenty five to go. If every day goes as well as today, it's going to be a great tour. It wasn't without it's very minor glitches, but all in all, I had a very nice ride.

We started at 6:00AM with a nice hot breakfast at the motel. I gather this is going to be a rare treat. Most

A hot breakfast before we start

days, we'll get a cold breakfast out in the parking lot before we start our ride.

The route out of Everett took us on several of my favorite cycling roads through Snohomish, Monroe and Sultan. Sultan is about 40 miles from my house and is usually part of my 100 mile training loop since it has a nice Bakery that serves a great lunch. Once we

Beautiful river view seen from roadside

got past Sultan, we were in unfamiliar territory for me, at least with regard to cycling. The road east was beautiful and the weather for this part of the ride was perfect. I stopped often to take photos of the various rivers, streams and waterfalls near the road.

It started raining as we climbed Steven's Pass, although not very hard. We actually got a little more rain further east as we descended toward Leavenworth, which in hind-sight made the ride much more pleasant. Once we got past the rain with about 20 miles to go, the temperature soared. My bike computer thermometer measured 102 degrees F. Fortunately, we had a nice tail wind and most of the route from Steven's Pass to Wenatchee is downhill, so we literally flew for the last 60 miles of the ride.

I pulled into the motel in the leading group at about 3:10PM with an average speed of 18 mph. Tomorrow's ride is supposed to be quite a bit tougher and I'm sure it will be much hotter (at least compared to the average temp for the day), so I'll have to slow down the pace to have the energy to make it the full 160 miles.

All in all, a great day. I met some very nice people that I'm sure I'll get to know much better over the coming weeks, and really enjoyed myself. Oh, the minor glitches - well, really only one to speak of - somewhere along the way I hit a rock and cut the sidewall of my rear tire. To be safe, I replaced it when we got to the motel even though it only had about 300 miles on it.

The equipment truck carries all our tools and spare parts Riding on Ben Howard Road, one of my local training routes Food stop in Goldbar

We rode through a short tunnel on the ride today There were numerous creaks and waterfalls near the road Lunch was about ten miles past the top of Steven's Pass