Day 7 - Colonial Campground to Winthrop, WA

Miles 64.7

Total Miles 345.7

 Had a nice night.  It rained off and on through the night.  Again, glad we had the RV instead of wet tents.  We all had to leave together today, since we need to head to Colonial campground again.  We arrived at our starting point about 9:00 a d took off.  We were immediately climbing.  The views to the top were again exquisite.  It did take the mind off the climb a bit to see the beauty and hear all the creeks as the rumbled down the mountainsides.

About 5 hours and 15 minutes later, I arrived at the top having traveled 32 miles of mostly uphill climbing.  It really was rather brutal.  I averaged 7 mph, but on the climbs, I was mostly traveling 4/5 mph. I just have to settle in and climb and not worry about how little distance I am moving. The peak was at 5,500 ft and I still had 32 miles to get to Winthrop. According to the map, it was mostly downhill, but as I started descending, I noticed that the wind was blowing right into our faces.  When the decent was steep, you would still move quickly, but as the decent lessened on the bottom, I actually had to pedal going down.  That was frustrating.  We pretty much fought the wind all the way to Winthrop.  We arrived about 4:45 and I was beat.  I don’t know if I have ever climbed a mountain to that extent.

One cool thing that happened was these young men passed me up as I created the mountain and then a mile or down the other side were standing by the road holding up a bottle of Gatorade and a banana.  I stopped and they asked if I needed it and I told them they couldn’t have been more timely as I ran out of water on my way up.  What wonderful people there are in the world.  It just always amazes me.

Brandon had everything set up at the RV park for us to arrive and crash for a bit.  We went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant and it tasted so good.  We are going to watch a movie tonight and I feel like I can use a goodnight.  

One of the things that really surprised me was how different the foliage is from one side of the mountain to the other.  This is a picture from the east side.  It so much more dry.

The West side. 😊