September 25
56mi/90km
2750ft/840m elevation gain
We knew we’d have rain today. The forecast has been telling us for days. We didn’t know we’d wake up to a wind advisory. So, in addition to the rain, we would have wind gusts of up to 45mph/72kph. We looked out the window and slightly regretted that we’d made hotel reservations for the night already, because if we hadn’t, we probably would have stayed put entirely. So, we suited up and headed out.
We’ve had worse wind on this trip, and we’ve definitely had worse rain, but not at the same time. We had three solid hours of the roughest weather we’ve had to endure. The gusts seemed to come from three directions. Sometimes it blew us to the left, sometimes to the right, and sometimes it was just a headwind. Sometimes it blew the rain so hard it felt like hail was hitting us. Even the cows we passed looked miserable, all huddled together with their backs to the wind, staring at us as we passed.
At one point, I was riding past a tree and heard a horrible cracking sound. Was that just a limb or is the whole tree coming down? I pedaled as fast as I could to get away, and turned back after I heard a crash behind me to see a limb had fallen across the sidewalk and into the street. A short while later a larger limb had taken down a power line. The ground was covered with pine needles, leaves, pinecones, and sticks. Sometimes the air was a swirling mess of small tufts of pine needles getting thrown about. We’d see a few more limbs fallen and falling. It smelled like Christmas trees. Fortunately, we were on low traffic roads and the drivers were very courteous today.
Around lunchtime we passed a park with sheltered picnic tables and headed straight for it. We took a few minutes to decompress, and I changed a couple layers that had gotten wet. We boiled some water for coffee and ate some lunch. The wind was finally dying down, and even the rain stopped.
The ride after lunch got much more pleasant. The sun came out and we followed some farm roads with almost no traffic. We saw a huge flock of migrating geese. Our phones were still socked away to keep dry, so we took very few photos today. Eventually it started raining again, and we rode on surface roads that roughly paralleled I-5. We crossed under and over the freeway 5 or 6 times and eventually arrived in Kelso. The rain stopped again. The hotel upgraded our room from 1 bed to 2 beds, and our room is huge. After this long streak in hotels, we’ll be camping the next two nights, and we are looking forward to it.