August 4, 2019
Topped up gas in Hermiston and again in Spokane, WA.
Lunch at some fast food stop on the Interstate.
Weather hot and windy.
Didn't take a single picture today.
Before leaving Hermiston checked Airbnb for places around Kettle Falls, WA. Settled on a private campground on a farm back in the woods off 395.
From Hermiston to Spokane US-395 joins an Interstate. Quite monotonous through vast prarie-like brown grasslands. I'd have said it looked like many areas of the midwest but the land is punctuated by gullies and hillocks and outcroppings of what look to my untrained eye to be volcanic rock that lies just beneath the surface. So the topsoil here must not be very deep. There was also a lot of smoke from wildfires somewhere over the horizon. Yesterday I saw one small fire in the distance shortly before Hermiston.
After Spokane there is more farmland but now much is irrigated so not all brown. Some kind of grain and one field of sunflowers. I've never seen that before, but, sunflower seeds have to come from somewhere. Towns are small and go by in a blink of an eye.
Message exchanges with the Airbnb host during the day. She warned me that there would be a 20 minute drive on a gravel road. I said "no problem." Almost rethought that after getting on the gravel. 5 miles uphill on horrible washboard. My poor bike. Washboard, if you've never been on it is especially bad uphill as your drive wheel(s) bounce and spin over every bump. On level or downhill on a bike you can sometimes find a speed that sort of smooths things out, but not uphill in my experience.
When I got to the farm looked over the bike and to my horror found what looked like an oil leak around the head gasket and immediately started imagining an incipient blown head gasket which would be a major inconvenience. More on this in Bike section.
The campground was not worth the effort to get to it. It is under construction with a main building that looks like it will serve food, communal showers and bathrooms and I'm not sure what else. I wonder how they will attract customers given the horrendous access road.