Crossing the Cascades

 

Crossing the Cascades

It was a delight to spend the night with the Rixons in North Bend.  They have a lovely house with wonderful view of the mountains.  When I arrived, there was a wonderful aroma of newly baked muffins which were made for the benefits of guests.  Pam Giffin and Glen Goodnough were a couple from Maine who were also embarking on a cross country trip.  It appears that there is an entire community of folks biking across the U.S.  The Rixons laid out a wonderful dinner and a tour of their gardens.  They scrambled up some eggs for us and supplied us with a batch of muffins for our journey of the day.

I set out to bike across the Cascades.  There is a rail trail across the state of Washington called the Palouse-Cascade trail.  It utilizes the infrastructure constructed for the abandoned rail road which makes it wonderful for biking.  A train can only ascend an incline of 4 per cent (and neither can I), so the incline is very gentle.  The eerie part of ride was the tunnel under the mountain.  It is 2 miles long and unlit.  As you enter, the temperature drops to 45 degrees and you are immediately immersed in darkness.  My bike lights lit the ground well, but I could not see the stone walls around me.  You can barely make out a dot of light in the distance (the light at the end of the tunnel) and if you concentrate on that, you can maintain your balance. 

            The trail is 245 miles along during which time you see not a single car.  It was a wonderful experience and I have included a few photos of what I observed.