Right from the start, it felt like a very different day. It had rained over night, the road were wet and it had cooled off. We checked out and started loading the bikes. The plan today was to head south a ways. And then west for a while.
Hey, I did say it was time to leave the plans behind, right?!
We rode south out of Nelson towards Salmo. It was still damp out and cool, I should have put my rain jacket on but thought it would warm up. We could see the clouds to the west and I was glad we were heading south before crossing over any passes.
The border crossing was relaxed and slow. We chatted with the border guard and she seemed to enjoy the time.
And then we were off in towards Tiger, WA. Unfortunately they were re-surfacing the roads and gravel from the chip seal was everywhere. So we took it easy and found our turn off. We turned onto Hwy 20 which was supposed to be very scenic. The road does a quick climb out of Tiger and the hairpins were the first chance we got to lean a little. And by lean a little I mean drag some knees.
People seemed to be quite happy to pull over where possible and let us pass, always much appreciated. I was getting colder and had to take a pit stop anyways, so we took a small break once we hit a straight stretch where it seemed safe to pull over and I dug out my rain jacket.
Note that the rubberduck is safely aboard and was enjoying the weather. No fear of getting wet there ;)
We descended into Colville and got some gas. Jerry ended up talking to a guy who had jars under the hood of his Toyota that apparently generated hydrogen and increased his fuel economy by 40 %. I thought the whole thing looked a bit iffy.
The duck didn't express an opinion.
Colville didn't seem like that much of a fun town and we were soon off again.
We were heading to Republic for some food and to decide where we were going to ride to next. Our buddy Don had good things to say about the roads around Republic in the past, of course some of them may have been gravel. In either case the highway got fun, the roads were good, we got some great passing in even though the pavement seemed a bit sketchy to me. I guess that's what happens when the chip seal wears down, it starts looking like tar strips with gravel in the middle.
Just as we cleared the pass it started to rain. Not a good sign.
Luckily the shower didn't last and we got into Republic without getting soaked. We spotted a little diner and were pulled in. We were starving!
The "Breakfast served all day" sign had me sold!
Note that the sky didn't exactly look friendly.
As we were chowing down on some excellent omlettes and drinking some not so excellent coffee, the sky opened up.
Good thing our bags are only mildly water resistant :)
Looks like day 4 will be a long one, so I'm going to split it into 2 parts.
End of part 1 :)
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