June 23 -Day 7: Wow, Wow and Yipee!

I spent last night at Kid Valley Campground which is at the foot of Mt. St. Helens. It looked like a quiet little campground. Everyone was in their tents by 9:30, except me; I was still working on my blog update.  What I found out this morning is there are a lot of chickens next door.  They are early risers.  I was awakened at 4:45AM to the continuous choir of roosters crowing. It sounded like there were chickens on 2 places and they were having a "battle of the bands".  First one group would crow and then second group would crow even louder.  Soon the lambs and other farm animals also joined the choir.  There is no going back to sleep with all of the racket. 

So when I departed this morning, I drove around to the back side of Mt. St. Helens.  The first WOW was the roads to get there.  They are National Forest roads with very little traffic in the middle of nowhere.  This is the the type of place one would not want to have any trouble because you are not sure how long it would be before any help would arrive.  The majority of the roads where in heavy forest areas and in many areas, the tree created a canopy over the road.  There were many patches on the road where the asphalt had sunk several inches so the road was not the smoothest, but it still a joy to ride.  Seeing the pavement issues was even more of challenge due to the constantly changing light conditions from shadow and shade to bright light.  Regardless, this was a ride to remember.

The second WOW is for the views of Mt. St. Helens.  All I can say is that it was spectacular.  This view as much different than yesterday.  Today, I was also much closer to the mountain.  Below are just a few of the photos I took today.

Sometimes you ride a route because of the road.  Sometimes you ride a route because of the destination.  Today's route is a double WOW as it was both a awesome road and an awesome destination.  Winner!

I also rode part of the Colorado River Gorge; here are a few photos from there.  Mount Hood is in the second photo.

The Yippie part is that my GPS is working again!!  The new GPS mount arrived today at Jim's place in Portland as planned.  I arrived at Jim's around 4:30PM.  It was a quick job to swap the mounts and everything appears to be working.  Tomorrow will be the first test, but all is expected to go well.

I had a meal, great conversation, and spent the night at Jim and Mary's house.  I want to thank them again for their generosity and hospitality.  They have welcomed me into their home and I did not even know Jim until a couple of days ago when we happened to meet at a campground.  When we met, I had no idea our conversation that night would turn into such an important part of my trip.  Thank You Jim and Mary.

Here is an image of today's route:

Note: Jim and I also washed our bikes tonight.  I got at least one layer of the bugs off from the photos I posted yesterday.