It's gonna be a great summer. har har har. <-super nerd reference. (starting off strong!)
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| That's Chewelah in the distance. |
I've pretty much nailed the chill route to Kettle Falls. It's a 95 mile run and about 6 miles of it is on 395. All of the rest of it is on back roads: paved, chip seal, gravel, and double track. In order to get a beer in before meeting Liza and Maddie, I had to make up some time on Friday. So, I did an additional 10 miles of 395. And 395 ain't so bad if you have some fresh "This American Life." Otherwise, I ride those back roads in silence.
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| I suck at pictures. The hope is to capture a great thing or moment or feeling and my pictures never do. But click for big and check out the shadow work on the side of that house. Pat, that means you! |
Aside from some mega wind, the day was perfect for riding. I loaded up a new-to-me route between Loon Lake and Chewelah on my GPS. My bike-mount GPS is being a piece of crap: the maps never work anymore and as an added bonus, it reboots intermittently and randomly. Errg.
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| Dig the name of this road. It suits the bike. I emailed this to Jan. |
Anyway, if you want to see where I went -- the first track of the trip is
here. Second is
here. If you want to make your own routes from gmap-pedometer, Loon to Chew is
here. Chew to Kettle Falls is
here.
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| First marshmallows of the year were promising. Maddie has two new marshmallow-related growth spurts: 1) she's more patient and waits for the brown. 2) she cares when she has melted marshmallow and the attendant dirt on her face. |
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| Yearly plumbing fussery was done. A new twist this year: someone stole two bits of hose. What the hey? See that threaded bit there by the red handle. That's the "in" that is supposed to have a hose connected to that little blue bit there on the tank. The hose on the toilet was missing too. Frickin weird. |
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| That 1/2 monster-dog there is the Bratwurst Chili dog at Northern Ales. With kraut, chili, cheese, horse radish, and Tabasco. That'll do. |
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| And that would be your basic Northern Ales IPA overlooking a full Kettle River. Word. |
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| Liza's Rock. It's hard to imagine a better river bike. Maybe if it had a dyno light set up for the late night Boyd's run. |
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| Junk Food Store run. |
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| Maddie is rocking the Miami. She's pretty useful with that as the main hauler of everything. |
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| Snake meet Maddie. |
For sure.
ReplyDeleteGreat soul-stirring post, John. I love it up there. And NA brewery is so, so rad. Very cool that you have been working on a route between Spo and KF. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to stay off of 395 in the Clayton-Loon-Chewelah stretch, and it's pretty tough. Glad that Mr Glass helped get you through your stint on the shoulder.
ReplyDeleteI have just one little thing to add that might enhance the route bit - it only pertains to about 6 miles of it and I know that when you're riding up to the river it's far enough that you want to get there in a pretty efficient manner and so this might not be of interest, but then again, it's interesting. On the section just north of Loon you can get off the road and ride the powerline trail. It's this kind of stufft
. Looking at google, it appears that it's a much straighter shot than the roads, so very little penalty for the amount of fun.
Shadow work on the side of the house duly noted, very nice. And I like the powerlines running right down the middle of the sky, too. Not sure what you're talking about with not being able to capture the moment - I dig that shot.