Hey guys, winter's comin' and I've been busier than a Senator in a cathouse
Where'd I leave off... Back in America! Eastern Washington and the weather's HOT! The scenery is refreshingly different than the Arctic and now I'm officially on vacation. I start working south from Republic
A pretty nice little town a guy could see himself retiring in. Down further out of the Okanogen country and starting to see some desert.
Little further on and I come to the Grand Coulee Dam. Well, I haven't been here in ages, so I stop for a picture and happen to find a couple on a Heritage Softail heading home to Idaho who'd be happy to take a pic for me.
Those tubes on the face of the dam are large enough to drive a truck through -just to give you a sense of scale.
It's gettin to be past breakfast time so at Coulee City (I think that was it), I start looking for a restaraunt. And as luck would have it, I found one. Same time as this nice couple also headin back to Idaho. Well I haven't had any decent conversation since Watson Lake (remember her?), and I was still getting over the heebie-jeebies from that so all three of us get a table together and we must have taken 2hrs to eat! He was a cool cat and man the stories just started flyin across that table. His wife was in stitches most the time. And I nearly had fried egg out the nose on an occasion or two. Kinda folks you wished you could stop in and see more often.
He reminded me of Santa Clause's hippy brother or something!
From here I've got to make a detour west of the Cascades so I can see the Old Man while I'm down. I figure the best route would be over the pass at Mt. Rainier. It'd be a pretty ride on two-lane road and it'd dump me down into Enumclaw -where he happened to be. Kind of a no-brainer, right?
Well it starts out fine enough, just catching the edge of some rain showers outside of Yakima, heading west up into the mountains on a beautifull twisty road following a stream. Traffic's light, road's been freshly paved, great big pine trees... perfect. Fer a while. As I gain altitude, I can see I'm going to hit a little weather pokin over from the rainy side of the state. Oh well, whadda ya want -egg in yer beer? Now I'm up good and high, it's raining, I'm peering through the soggy windscreen at a fog line 25 feet in front of me on a road with no shoulders or guardrail that's making switchbacks 3000 feet above the valley floor that I presume is down there under this cloud I'm in. Just when I get comfortable riding along at 20mph with NO visability -just following the stripes, I see a sign for road construction. Stripes are gone, pavement's gone, my nerves are shot
. Georgia must be makin a killin on all this friggin greasy clay they're exporting. And I'm not kidding, you couldn't see more than 20 feet in this crap.
So I make it down the other side allright (you prolly guessed), roll into Dad's at about 2 in the afternoon and we had a blast. Had a beer or 10
, had a bar-b-que with him, my step-mom, and a friend we've known for 20 years or so. Hit the road the next day at about the same time. Man, 24hrs of R&R felt awsome! I hadn't been off the bike for more than 6hrs at a stretch for 3000 miles and five days.
I'll keep em comming as I can, long as anyone's still readin! -Japhy
. I was shocked that there was even anyone in town that had a motorcycle- what's the point? Like a lot of the villages up here that are off the road system, I found many places through northern Canadia that had absolutely no reason to exist. No industry, no tourism- unless you count the people passing through who stop for gas and a meal. Nothing but a few hundred people passing around std's and trying to get through another winter without climbing into a warm bath with a razor blade.
It starts gettin better from here! Promise... Japhy
(stash was gettin thin). Speakin of thin, the tread on my back tire had been leaving at an alarming rate. Pressure was checked each morning, but them northern roads are all chip-seal. We've got some of that in Alaska as well, but the crushed rock they roll into the oil is about the same size as what you'd find in asphalt. Canadians must just find a talus slope they can mine for the stuff- cause it is COARSE! 2" crushed rock was not unusual. Like riding on a cheese grater. 
. Meet the Man at the gate and, as it turns out, the American border patrol actually gives a shit about who's comin and who's goin. Go figure. No hassles though, and we're off to find a place to crash. For a change, I actually know where the hell I am as I grew up in Wa state. So i head down to Tonasket and then cut east through the hills towards Republic, finding a nice little lake to camp at around 11pm. Man, does it feel good to be back in the states- particularly this state. If there's anything Alaska lacks, it's variety. You can drive across Washington and go from rainforest to desert. Nice to get a change of scenery every hunert miles or so.
