Yakima to Cle Elum

Thursday, August 23: 70 miles

Thursday dawned clear and beautiful. Our party rolled out of Yakima into the Yakima River Canyon. We enoyed this magnificent scenery all day. The only low spots were the 4 miles of broken concrete road going into Ellensburg, the subsequent flat tire, and the headwinds which started at 1 p.m. which threatened to push us back to Ellensburg from Cle Elum. We rode with Alison for half this day again. We kept on seeing Thyce and Amy and Ric and Toni, but couldn’t stay with either of them.

We were in downtown Cle Elum when we first started feeling spits of rain. I panicked and drove us faster to get the camp set up. I was a whirlwind setting up the tent. Not 15 minutes after it was up and we were safely settled inside, the rain hit with a vengeance. Ahhhhh, to be safe and dry. It showered on and off for a few hours. Our nightly meeting was inside a gym at the school we were camped at. Michael and Tamara joined us for some cards that evening in our tent. Which I have forgotten to mention was the biggest in the campground. We could have had square dance classes in there. We took to calling it the Taj Mahal. (Thanks Steve and Carla!) But we liked it.