Wednesday, August 21

75 miles: Kettle Falls to Curlew Falls

“No major climbs today,” we were told. We were ecstatic. We hit the road in the morning and headed north to Canada. We never could seem to get any speed going though. I complained that I just didn’t have any legs today. As we listened, all the riders were saying the same thing. Hmmm.

Crossed the border with no incident, despite all the concerns about post-9/11 security. Rode along Canada Hwy 3, a horribly busy road with precious little shoulder. We stopped in Grand Forks, BC for a snack and to visit a spandex fashion company. Turned out they only made swimwear and dance stuff. No cool bike jerseys. Rats.

Back in the USA, we continued to ride slowly along what seemed like level roads. Like most of the roads on RAW, this one followed the course of a river. It was very pretty and should’ve been generally downhill. We didn’t notice the river was flowing the wrong way until we got in. Headwinds again seemed to be the order of the day. We were beat by the 70 mile point and took refuge at the Malo General Store. We sat on the porch for 40 minutes to rest up for the last 5 miles. Finally we got into the strikingly beautiful campsite on Lake Curlew. Spent 45 minutes cooling off in the lake before dinner.

As it turns out, we HAD been climbing all day. We’d gained 3300’ on what we thought were flat roads. No wonder everybody was complaining.