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June, 08 I Montesano - Raymond I Washington, United States I Km, 50.44

Pacific Coast Bike Route: Day 06

Today was a wet, wet, wet, wet day! There was blue sky as we got the bikes ready to go but the moment we were about to leave, it started pouring rain. That was the theme of the day!

We started off from Montesano and headed down highway 107 along the river. A promising route as we saw train tracks meaning no hills! We travelled along the river and the rain was on and off and when it was on, it was hard! We made a lot of clothing changes because it literally went from hot to freezing rain in minutes. After, Patrizia decided to stay with long cycling pants, sweaters and a light jacket and Ellie went with water repellent shorts and light jacket.

We rode with a lot of vroom, vroom, vroom once we merged onto 101. And the highway was fairly up and down. We had to do a quick stop on a narrow shoulder part of the highway to avoid the crosswind from a huge tractor trailer crossing the centre line to pass two cars. It's not a good feeling to see a big truck like that in front of you travelling at high speed so close. Thankfully, the rest of the ride was just noise, no excitement like that! We were basically in the rain and noise for 90% of the time.

Because we travelled most of the day in the rain, we didn't take a lot of pictures and just kept going for just under 4 hours. We stopped in Raymond and checked into a motel to warm up and dry off. Luckily, the rain stopped about an hour later and we could explore the town.

Some interesting shops: a Asian grocery store like a small T&T market (Ellie's mom would shop there for sure) and a cute mexican market. But the neat part of this place was the metal sculptures throughout the town and its history. The town was a sawmill mecca (20 sawmills in the early 1900's but now, there may just be one left). There was a huge flood in 2007 and the town was under 5 feet of water. Lots of stores have closed here but surprisingly, there are a lot of bike paths in it, around and out of the place. It's by a river and the views are nice.

The forecast is way better for tomorrow so we should be back on the saddle and closing in on Oregon!

Patrizia's trying to hitch a ride!

Will they bring our bikes to Oregon?!