Camping at Bay View was great. Showers were cheap, and Al paid only 12 bucks for all of us! I found out later Al even paid for TJs shower. Cool. A racoon did get into my snack bag that night, unzipping it even, and eating my red vines. I assume it was a coon, it could have been Roger anyways.

It didn't get as cold last night as the prior night. The prior night was in the low 40s, which is well past the lower limit of my camping gear. Last night was in the upper 40s. The difference is huge, really!

We left our campground in a hurry. We had missed our last two grocery stops, and were living off of our packed emergency food. I had 4 packets of dry oatmeal as my only food, so I ate two of them and hit the road. Laura finished off everything she had packed except for a single ramen packet.

We saw this awesome looking slug near our tents.

Sorry for the late post, pictures to be added later.

So, today we conquered our last mountain passes, Washington and Rainy. As it turns out, that was the easy part of the day.

Sorry for the late post. PIctures to be posted later.

We left Twisp, with the goal to hit the base of Washington-pass, or even a bit further. This would eliminate a lot of climbing and make the summet easier to hit because everything after Twisp was uphill. It was supposed to be an easy day.

It was probably the most amazing and most challenging day of our lives, and we had posted very little. I updated the day with a ton of pictures, none of which can do the day justice. Check it out.

http://benthub.com/node/842

Looking back at this sends chills down my spine.....for several reasons. I hope you enjoy the photos....it was tough narrowing it down to only a subset of pictures.

I added photos to day 31. Sorry for the delay. They include my only bear picture, and our start on Sun Road. Some amazing stuff, really.....I promise. Check it out!

http://benthub.com/node/841

Laura and I didn't sleep very good. I woke up to an upset stomach. Lucky for us, we had been considering a short day today, in order to position us at the base of the next mountain pass. Loup Loup pass will be our second longest climb yet, yet the steepest. Our legs are still tired from the last 2 climbs in the last 2 days, so it is a good time for a break. We rode 31 miles to Okanogan, with less than 1000 feet of climbing today. It was a pretty easy ride, although I sorta struggled having not been able to hold much food or water down.

Lets say you are planning to bike up a mountain. You are expecting a cold rain. Do you wear your rain gear? If you wear it, you will be soaked in sweat, and baking. If you do not wear it, you will be soaked in rain, and freezing.

We woke up today to a wonderfully entertaining surprise....Taters had her first flat tire of the trip. She did a prety darn good job of fixing it.

It gave Rog and I a chance to nap.

I added pictures and some corrections to day 30. Take a look at days gone past by clicking Northern Tier 2011 on the upper left menu. If you dont check the photos out, you will miss out on a picture of Roger with a flooded campsite.

I just want to quickly say a bit THANK YOU to the 3 people who got Benthub back up and running. Thanks Brent for helping us get a backup of the old server. Thanks Dee for crawling through spider webs to unclog the tubes of the internet. And thanks Chuck for doing an amazingly fast transfer of Benthubs managament system and database to an entirely new server in record time.

You guys are awesome! I simply couldn't have done any of this remotely. The internet speeds here are terrible; it is hard enough sending emails and posting text based blog entries.

Anyway. Thanks Brent, Dee, and Chuck!