WABDR 2017

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Sunday would be our first full day on the route, taking us out of section one and into section two. We fixed the breakfast foods that we had each brought and had a bit of a leisurely morning breaking camp. We got on the road about twenty minutes to nine. The first order of business was to top up with gas. Coming back out of the campground to the paved road, we turned south to ride into the town of Trout Lake, about five miles away. click to enlarge The sole gas station owner was a really friendly guy and the station had a nice looking little café attached to it. Getting gas and generally messing around, we got back to where we left the route previously by about 10 that morning. The weather was gorgeous and the ride easy. We passed by some beautiful places, stopped to take pictures of a particularly nice meadow with Mt. Adams framed behind it. That was Takh Takh Meadow click to enlarge , by the way.

Eventually we met up with US Highway 12 and rode into Packwood click to enlarge where we stopped for lunch about 1pm at Cliff Droppers, where I had stopped before for lunch. Great burgers! After lunch we went into the grocery store to buy food for dinner and then finally got back on the road by 3pm. This is the start of section two which is about 35 miles of highway leading through White Pass past Rimrock Lake taking us to about 4330 feet which felt pretty good at the hottest part of the day.

Forty minutes of US 12 got us to 1500 and the road to Bethel Ridge. This is somewhat infamous because it contains what some in ADVrider.com have called "babyhead hill". That’s kind of a horrible name, but "babyhead" refers to loose rock the size of softballs (or a baby’s head). We had seen video of others hitting this and we weren’t really looking forward to it. We went through one small section that I thought was it and was thinking, "yeah that was hard but not THAT bad." Well, I was wrong.

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