We woke up early to another foggy morning in Washington. Pretty much every day we've been here, it has been really foggy and chilly in the morning. But somehow, almost every day the fog has cleared into a beautiful sunny day. Joe and I made pancakes this morning for everyone and then we hit the road. Unfortunately, we didn't have an opportunity to see Sandra again this morning since she had to leave early for work. Again it was fun riding with a big group. Our first turn started us off climbing hills. They continued on throughout the day, although it seemed like we did way more ups, than downs. After about 5 miles or so, we came across construction that said "local traffic only." Usually for us though, there is a way to sneak through without too much trouble. That was the case this time too, except there were 6 bikes and a trailer to go through. The guys working construction said that it was the worst possible scenario to have to go through the construction site, but it turned out to be just fine. There was a short section to start and then we turned into a downhill and then made a right and we were out of the construction zone just like that. We all thought it was one of the best construction sites we had been through, so we don't know what they were talking about. Ronja was not having as good of a day as normal and ended up crying a lot. Eventually we found rt. 161 that we followed for almost the entire day. The traffic was really heavy in the beginning, especially since it was a 4 lane, but it later turned to a two lane, not quite as busy, road. Greg, Lea and Ronja stopped early for lunch by a lake, but the rest of us decided to keep going and make it to the next town (Eatonville) which was less than 10 miles away. We would wait for them to catch up there. Once we split, Joey, Kevin and Charles took off. They waited for me at the top of one of the hills, but I told them to just go ahead to town. It is sometimes easier to just go my own speed and not have to feel like I am slowing anyone down. With the big group it isn't so bad because there are 2 of us girls to wait for, not just me. There was a little grocery store in town where we restocked on a few things. Joey and I bought some stuff to make ham sandwiches for lunch, which was great since there was no clean up. We had a few peaches left, so we each had one of those too. From there, the 4 of us went to the library for a while to kill time while we waited for Greg, Lea and Ronja to get to town. It worked out just fine splitting up for lunch. I was able to get caught up on all of my blogs and we were able to relax for a while. Later we found out that Greg and Ronja had gone swimming on their lunch break, which would have been nice, but we enjoyed getting to town, having something different for lunch, sitting at a picnic table, and going to the library. Our lunch break ended up being a couple hours long, but that is ok. Yesterday we were able to get a few great glimpses of Mt. Reiner, and in town we could see it again- it was almost like a ghost because sometimes it was there and other times it was out of sight. From town, we rode for the last little bit on rt. 161. Our planned route turned out to be a closed road for construction, but we all decided to give it a shot anyways. It was a beautiful road, it meandered up and down, back and forth across the edge of the hills; the views were just spectacular. The road was indeed closed, with cement barriers in the middle of the lanes, but nothing we couldn't push our bikes around. There was no one around, since they weren't working today, so it worked out great. We had the entire road to our selves- and boy was it peaceful to not have to hear or smell cars!! This just gave us all such a "happy high" to get to just purely enjoy the area we were riding through and breath the fresh air. It was a great way to spend the afternoon! We had originally planned on riding to Alder Lake (in the town of Alder), and it came up sooner than I expected. In the end though, we all decided to go to Alder Lake Park and relax. There were picnic tables, bathrooms with running water, a playground for Ronja, a swimming area, and beautiful scenery-what more could we ask for, it was perfect! A few of us decided to go swimming, but we didn't stay in for long since it was a little chilly. Joe and I played a game of Farkel and made a box of mac and cheese for dinner, even though we weren't super hungry like we normally are. It was very nice to just relax for the rest of the afternoon (and my arm enjoyed it too- it was definitely ready to be done for the day!). We all enjoyed watching the beautiful cotton candy sunset, and then ventured over somewhere out of the way/out of sight to set up camp. There is a campground close by, but since we are all on tight budgets, we figured we would try to camp here for free. We'll see how it goes. Our miles totaled 36.14 today.
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