Colville- the rocky road to a fun few days

7/19

I arrived back in Seattle around 9:00 in the morning, met Alex at the airport, and we made the final turn towards home. Heading east on highway 20 we encountered the beauty of the North Cascades. I was dead tired, though, and spent our break in the national park sleeping on a bench outside of the visitor's center.





After an hour or so Alex was itching to get back on the road and we pressed on, riding east towards Colville, WA. The North Cascade Highway is beautiful, but can be a bit of a trick to follow as it jogs and is constantly changing directions and names. On one eventful ocasion, late in the day, Alex was leading us and discovered the highway took a jog to the left. He saw the sign late, reacted, and made the turn with little asphalt to spare. I, riding close behind and still a bit tired, reacted not so fast to his lead, braked hard, atempted the turn, felt my back tire break lose, bailed out of the turn, and soon found my way through the ditch and into a nice grassy pasture. Laughing, surprised at my fortunate safety, I turned the bike around in the grass and drove the bike back onto the road where a very petrified Alex had returned expecting to find me wrapped around a tree. I couldn't stop giggling. He didn't understand what was so funny and rode away. I followed a little more intently.

The drive to Colville was deceivingly long. We went through dozens of quaint mountain towns, some thriving on tourism, and others dead as a doornail. The setting sun brought a new danger which we were alerted to by a phone call from our next host. Deer were everywhere, and I began to pray a prayer that I have uttered almost every day of the trip: "Lord keep us safe from the animals and keep the animals safe from us." And while we did see probably 8-10 deer, several of which were in the road, we remained safe from one another.

After a disappointing wrong turn, we finally made it to our destination with the trip odometer reading 10156 miles. We were met by our host, Jenny, who called us in to the correct driveway as Alex and I sat in the road contemplating if this was in fact the correct place. Your margin for error becomes frighteningly small after 11:00pm. You really don't want to be waking the wrong folks up at midnight, standing at their door, wearing black leather.

Jenny didn't seem to mind our lateness or leatherness. She was happy we made it void of any deer and invited us inside for some cherries. (We soon found out that east Washington has excellent orcharding.) She listened to a few of our stories from the past few days before we retired to bed in the prepared camper outside.

The next few days were such a blast as we were able to go to church, relax/read/write in the hammocks, ride horses, do some yard work, fish, enjoy meals together, exchange stories. It was excellent. I am just encouraged time an time again at the hospitality and willingness of people to open their homes to us. Alex and I are very thankful.



Something you may or may not know about Alex: he has a tendency to throw little mini temper tantrums, something left over from childhood. Here is a rare look at one caught on film as he was fishing in a lake near the house.