Day 3 - Coulee Dam to Spokane, WA

Well, first of all - I (yes, me without Craig) made it to the laser light show last night - it was sooo cool!! I ran into Susan, Veronica and Roger over there - 4 out of the 50! It was late to be up. I have some pics on Flickr. We learned a lot about the Columbia River and how the dam was built and how many benefits it has for the surrounding towns. I also uploaded the Wild Life - Parking sign - I still think it's funny.

Today was an incredible day, not so much of a tailwind as yesterday but some. It was a bit of a brisk morning but not too bad. We ate outside and I finally remembered to bring my Organic Ground Siagon Cinnamon from Laura at Milford Spice Company (milfordspice.com) for my oatmeal - an excellent anti-inflammatory and so very yummy in oatmeal! It's like gourmet oatmeal everyday - cranberries, almonds, brown sugar, blueberries - oh my! (I hope I'm still so enamored with it on day 27!)

We headed out of the reservoir basin with a steep short climb right out of the gate and more climbing for ~10 miles - although not too bad as it had a few downhills throughout. The weather was stunning and we just spun along enjoying the countryside. The total mileage for today was 83 miles so we figured why burn out our legs early. Ok, call me dumb - but I had no idea how many wheat fields Washington had - cherries (delicious red and Rainer YES) but wheat - no. We saw wheat in all it's forms, little baby shoots, some that just looked like grass, bright green waves of wheat swaying in the breeze and the wheat you all imagine - golden, and of course the start of it all the tilled up earth - oh my I feel like the guy from Forrest Gump -"shrimp gumbo, boiled shrimp, fried shrimp..."

We went through these gorgeous rollers with some incredibly smooth pavement - being from Michigan we have some of the worst pavement in the country - so this has been divine! As I was cruising along there were two large double grain haulers coming up from the opposite direction and for some reason I felt like a kid and gave them the arm pump to signal I wanted them to honk - honking when I know and expect it - good! It was so cool - I was beaming. I had another experience with a motor cycle today that made me laugh (Mickey and Rondo B I thought of you guys). The guy went by and gave me the "signal" you know the one you see them give each other - arm out down just slightly wave/peace sign. I did it back and then quickly looked over my shoulder to make sure there weren't motorcycles behind me - Nope! Those two things made me think - if you make eye contact with other 'users of the road' maybe it does make them look at us (cyclists) as more human. I can only hope.

We didn't see a lot of riders today a few here and there and at the rest stops. We had Mike, Tom, Ernie, and Tom pass us and I got an excellent shot of them going down the road - check out the pics. At lunch there were tons of folks there - since we only had about 20 miles left and couldn't check into our rooms until after 2:30 (usually) we hung out and chatted with everyone. We went through a few small towns and there wasn't really any funny signs today darn it. BUT, there was a wagon and instead of having horses it had two Canada Geese pulling it - again, I wish I would have taken a pic - but thankfully Susan did - Hilarious! (It's on the pactour.com, Susan's blog) After lunch there was a really cool house that was like a barn too - I hope I posted it, kinda had a tinge of scariness to it as well, like it could have been a part II to Amityville Horror - just after it was a really steep looking climb that actually was a lot of fun too!

We actually did laundry today without using the bathtub - it was quite a line up to get in but we did and mmmmmmm do our clothes smell better! Dinner was an authentic Mexican Restaurant - which it seems had no idea that a pack of ravenous riders where going to converge on them and eat them out of everything! The poor guy did the best he could and we ate with Ernie (WA) and Tom (CA) and got to know them better - they did have Dos Equis and Modelos -mmmmm beer!

Lon and Susan showed a documentary of their records for crossing the USA on their tandem - we missed some of it but the last 10 minutes we saw got me misty - how awe inspiring they are! Amazing, so amazing!! They ROCK! Then they hosted an ice-cream social - yum! Mint Chocolate chip, caramel with pralines and more caramel on top!! Dee-lish!!