Friday June 3, Republic to Colville

 

After a wonderful visit with our hosts Rob and Patty last night, we headed out on our journey.  The view from their windows was beautiful with ribbons of clouds draping the mountains. 


Thankfully when we checked the weather in the morning, the rain that have been predicted for all day had  changed to it just being cloudy until afternoon including at Sherman Pass so we set off at 7:30 to make the pass before afternoon. As we wound our way up in the beautiful scenery, we saw evidence of a fire in the past nearer the top and found out from a scenic turnout  that it occurred in 1988. At the pass it was still dry and we enjoyed a fast downhill for 10 miles.  This was our 4th pass (technically 5th) in 4 days and our highest pass so far at 5575 ft. 



 Near the Columbia River we met another bicyclist who was crossing the country with his dad and it sounded like his dad was back biking with Ed. We all met up together in Kettle Falls and were riding together when a thunderstorm hit. Jim said “it’s raining cats” and then when it started raining really hard at one point, “it’s raining cats and dogs!”  When we got to Colville, we found the others inside a restaurant where we joined them to get something warm to eat and be out of the rain, which had quit by the time we left. They all decided to stay in town while we went on another 4 miles uphill to the bike hostel where we were the only ones staying. The hosts have a Friday night dinner at their house and we were invited too; about 12 of us all eating together. Afterwards several of them were practicing praise songs for their worship service so we sang along too before heading back to the hostel building for the night. 



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