June 16, 1998 - Lake Wenatchee - Wenatchee

DISTANCE TRAVELED: 48.06 Miles

TIME: 4:25 Hours

AVERAGE SPEED: 16.4 Miles/Hour

TRAVEL CONDITIONS: Bright Sunny and warm becoming fairly hot in the afternoon.

ROAD CONDITIONS: Smooth roads in the beginning turning into a small amount of rough road in the end.

TERRAIN/DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Almost all of the trip was downhill except for a little amount of uphill and lots of flat land. The trip was very easy especially compared to yesterday's trip.

DAILY JOURNAL COMMENTS:
Today I got up at 6:50 and began to get breakfast ready for everyone. This consisted of eggs mixed with tofu and cheese which actually turned out to be very good. We ran out of food for lunch so I threw in a couple of Stoker bars for lunch hoping to find a place to eat along the road. I packed up my tent and was the last to throw everything into the van. I finally left around 11:00 and tried to catch up to the rest of the people who were in front of me. I quickly joined up with Jen and David and stayed with them for the rest of the day. As we continued on, we traveled along the Lake Wenatchee river winding right along the banks.(Picture4) We were able to watch kayakers go down the class 5 rapids before continuing on to Levenworth. This is a cool Dutch village that has many shops and places to eat. We stopped at a local cafe and I had a Giant Pretzel along with an apple strudel for my lunch. We then left the cafe and began to continue onto Wenatchee. At this point the long downhill stopped and we began with a short uphill before continuing on to a long flat that was very nice when I used my aerobars. After a while, we came to Wenatchee and took a turn to go to our host's house to spend the night. We arrived by traveling through trees that were covered with cherries around 3:25. When we arrived we found that three others had previously arrived at camp. We then continued on by taking a quick shower after which a few people went down to a local store. I stayed back at camp and ate some food before we went to a lake to go swimming. We got back around 7:00 and then dinner was started. We had pasta with a peanut sauce which was great. Since our hosts own an organic fruit farm, we were able to have lots of fruit. They gave us the best cherries that I have ever had and then continued by showing us where they keep all of their fruit in the refrigerator. He took us over to a pile of dried fruit that was bagged and had been labeled as not to be sold. This was the "bad" fruit because it was the end of the fruit so it didn't look good or it was not a perfect ring. They had dried nectarines which were too dark because they had been dried for too long and because of this they were able to give us lots of unneeded dried fruit. It tastes great and is very refreshing after eating basically the same food for the past few days. I then fixed up my bike since the gears weren't working correctly and then went to bed. We got to bed around 12:00. The night is beautiful with clear skies and a perfect temperature to sleep.

TRIP ROUTE:
Go out of campground and turn right on 207. Turn left on 2 and go through Levenworth. Near Cashmere 2 and Rte 97 merge. Stay going towards Wenatchee. Take Rte 285 exit. Don't go E Wenatchee 285 which is also N Wenatchee Ave. Bad rd for 3 miles then Y at Miller. Take straight road don't go left to 285. Pass high school and Hospital. Lt on Crawford to N Wenatchee(=285) Follow Wenatchee Ave South past drive in theater about 4 miles. Rt on West Malaga Rd. Rt on McEldowney Rd.