Now that we’ve reached civilization, it’s time to catch you up on what you missed on Glee. We’re proud to report we’ve had another successful I4Kamping trip, and can add yet another national park to our list! We hope we haven’t peaked with this one (haha, get it?). Due to terrible air quality and wildfires coming dangerously close to our planned route, we took a second unplanned rest day of the trip and shuttled to Mount Rainier in our trusty SAV. While it was very disappointing to not be able to ride into the park, we’re grateful that we were able to stay there at all, as the AQI originally looked concerning enough for us to have to make alternate plans and skip the park entirely. We enjoyed a rest day where we visited the mountain, went on some small hikes, and enjoyed our time out in nature. Today, we said goodbye to the park and rolled almost 90 miles to Castle Rock, a small town that has greeted us kindly with food and showers to refresh us after a long time away from civilization. We’re excited beyond belief to be two weeks out from the Golden Gate Bridge, and are cherishing every moment we have together in our final leg of the ride.
Ride Overview, Days 60 & 61
Mileage: 0
Elevation: 0
Points of Interest: Mount Rainier National Park, La Wis Wis Campground, Silver Falls Campground, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Packwood, WA, Cliff Droppers, Cruiser’s Pizza, Base Camp Coffee
Quotes of the Day
“Who needs Mount Rainier when you have her glacial run off.” - Emma
“This is no good.” - Lucas, after dipping his toe in a freezing river.
Tales of the Trail, Days 60 & 61
Stepping outside of the Yakima YMCA on Thursday morning was reminiscent of a barbeque — without any meat? A few minutes outside was enough to make our clothes smell like smoke, which solidified in our minds that not riding was a good choice. Similar to our shuttle day into Missoula, we took two van trips to our campground, which took about six hours in total. Once the first group was dropped off at the campsite with half of our bikes and gear, we headed to the nearby small town of Packwood (about 7.5 miles out of the campground) to check out the local restaurants and markets. The second group spent some more quality time in Yakima stocking up at Target and making some much needed coffee runs.
Lucas driving the van up the foggy mountain slopes to the campsite. Thank goodness for SAV’s weirdly bright headlights.
Our second I4promposal — Olivia and Riddhima!
The day passed very peacefully and uneventfully, with the most thrilling thing being the ride to the campsite itself. We’d like to thank Lucas for his expert van driving in some very foggy conditions (foggy due to the high altitude, we’d like to clarify, not smoggy from smoke! The wildfire smoke was basically nonexistent near Mount Rainier). However, the evening brought fun and festivities in the form of I4Kristmas! If you haven’t caught it in the recent journals, I4Kristmas is one of the I4K team holidays in which each team member is assigned another team member to give something under $10, as well as something they found on the side of the road during the ride.
Using our handy bike stand as the I4Kristmas tree, we exchanged our gifts and celebrated with our traditional camp meal of hot dogs and beans. Gift highlights include an oddly satisfying “Goo Maze” that Olivia purchased for Jack, a very dirty dog stuffed animal that Joey found on the road side for Anthony, and many assorted fun hats that have now been dispersed throughout the team. Merry I4Kristmas to all, and to all a good night!
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree… or something like that. This picture definitely wasn’t just included for the hilarious amount of Target bag wrapping paper.
A team pic with our I4Kristmas swag!
Our planned rest day in Rainier had a bit more structure to it. While we weren’t able to enter the park as early as planned due to a lack of a reservation (National Parks have seen an enormous boom in tourism since COVID, which makes them very difficult to visit during certain times of day), we spent our morning hiking around the nearby Silver Falls campground. We headed back to Packwood for lunch, before doing some cliff jumping in a VERY cold river near our campsite. Shout out to Anthony for catching some truly epic drone footage of our jumps (despite not getting it on the first try and needing our teammates to jump again for the video. The things we do for Tony and his Droney).
Hiking? We totally do that too!
Big rock? Stand on it!
We then hit up the mountain itself, visiting its main visitor center and taking a short walk for some scenic views. We took the time to learn about the mountain’s wildlife — which included getting up close and personal with some of it — and to just admire its massive structure, and to think back on how far we’ve come. Milestones like these national parks are another reminder of how incredible our journey has been, and provide a great opportunity for reflection. Mount Rainier was one of the sites mentioned by a few of our teammates in the very first journal as the place they were most looking forward to. Now that we’ve made it, it’s crazy to realize that we have essentially biked across the country. The volume of our journey can hit us at any point, but moments like these are where it feels incredibly real.
Mount Rainier photobombed our awesome team selfie.
We wound down from our eventful day with some campfire brats, which we enjoyed while listening to the album “Brat” by Charli XCX, a team favorite this summer. Brats and Brat were a great way to finish off our last back-to-back I4Kamping days — while we will camp a couple more times this summer, they will only be single night adventures. We also only have one more planned rest day for this ride; we’re crossing our fingers that the wildfires currently raging in Oregon will be far enough out of our way to allow us to bike as planned. We were still able to appreciate the beauty of Mount Rainier, even if we did get here by car — this is how most sane people travel across the country, after all. However, we’re beyond excited to be back on our bikes and making our way further west and south towards our final destination of San Francisco.
Ride Overview, Day 62
Mileage: 89
Elevation: 3,048’
Ride Dedication: Win Graebner, Joey’s great grandfather
Points of Interest: Packwood, WA, Cowlitz River, Morton, WA, Riffe Lake, Mayfield Lake, Filbert Road, Papa Pete’s Pizza
Quotes of the Day
“Challenge day — no water!” - Maaike
“It’s always the people in the hamster cars that want to zoom past us.” - Neal
Tales of the Trail, Day 62
Joey, in charge of today’s morning activity, said that his idea involved us using our phones and wifi. Considering our stayover was a campsite in the middle of the woods and most of our devices were completely dead, we settled on a game of hide and seek instead. Many members of the team took this game as a very serious challenge, and covered themselves in spider webs and who knows what else to escape Joey for ten minutes, with varying degrees of success. All in all, the unnecessarily stressful children’s game was a great way to get our blood pumping early in the morning.
Mount Rainier apparently never wanted us to leave, as the campground attempted to hold us hostage by providing us with a decently sized climb on our way out, along with one flat tire! Nevertheless, we pushed through our rocky start to the day and rode one last time through Packwood. Today was truly a day of small towns and gas stations, as we hit too many to count and remember. Our first rest stop featured a promposal from Lucas to Olaf in preparation for our upcoming I4Prom, in which team members pair up with “prom dates” and wear goofy outfits for a night of festivities.
Olaf and Lucas after a successful promposal!
A happy Joey with a very large gas station sub. Bon appetit!
The landscape has turned more into the Washington we expected (a.k.a., Washington as it is shown in the “Twilight” movies). We’re happy to report we’re seeing a lot less yellow and a lot more green, although today was still plenty full of farmland. The weather has thankfully cooled on us since reaching a much higher elevation, and we greatly appreciated having less heat as we had to make many, many stops for assorted bike issues. As we reach the last leg of the trip, our bikes are starting to realize that 4,700 miles is a LOT of miles. We’re eternally grateful that they’ve held on this long (and would greatly appreciate if they could hold out just a tad longer!!! Please!!!). New tubes and tires are in high demand, and van driver Lucas truly had his work cut out for him today as he drove from group to group providing roadside assistance. Again, you can’t spell savior without SAV.
Kev takes a roadside nap as they wait for SAV to come help with one of many flats.
Maaike and Olivia making their way through those Washington forests.
Our stayover greeted us very kindly with many pizzas from Papa Pete’s Pizza, which was absolutely delicious and exactly what we needed at the end of such a long day. We’d like to give a special shout out to the janitor of the Castle Rock Christian Church, who left a beautiful sign for us complete with some magnificent artwork. Little things like this are exactly what we need to make us smile :) We’re back on the road tomorrow and hitting our second to last state of the ride, as well as one of the larger cities of the trip — Portland, Oregon! We’ll be crossing the bridge in two weeks time and are so excited to be seeing our loved ones — not to mention our beloved beds — very very soon.
Thank you Kit! You draw a bicycle better than we ever could. :)
Cyclist’s Corner
Today’s Rider: Joey Shepin
How are you feeling today?
I’m doing pretty well, we had a pretty long day. I got three — actually four flats. You were saying earlier that when Francisco [my bike] gets a flat, it’s not just one, it’s a bunch. It’s a lot in one day.
Which chore have you been doing for the team during the ride? Can you share your process doing this chore?
My chore is to maintain the lunch box. Every day, the team eats lunch — usually every day, out on the side of the road. It’s important that we have enough food for the team, so my job is…every day, once we get back to our stayover, I take out the spoons and I wash them in the sink. Then I dry the spoons, and I put them back in the box, and I clean out whatever trash is in there. And then I also inform the van driver of anything we need to buy for the lunch box.
What’s the best food you’ve eaten on the ride so far?
We’ve had good food. I think my favorite food has been the donuts at Wall Drug. I had eight of them. They were so good. I especially enjoyed the maple donuts.
Do you have a favorite team memory?
The meetup that we had in Chicago, the party at Logan’s house, I thought was a really fun experience. I liked meeting people’s parents, and some alums were there, and some of the board came, and so it was kind of cool to just meet up with everybody. Logan’s family did a fantastic job hosting us, and the music, it was a ton of fun.
Is there anything you’ve learned during the ride that you didn’t expect?
I feel like I could give a really philosophical answer, but I think for me, really learning the ins and outs of a road. Like the side of a road, you know. When you’re in a car, you don’t really think about all the stuff that’s on the side of the road. We’re always just going down so many different kinds of roads, and I think I wasn’t expecting to become so close with the side of the road environment. A lot of shoulders, looking at the weird things on the side of the road.
What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?
I think I’m gonna take a nap, and then I would love to have a meal with my mom and my brother. I’m excited for that. My mom’s a great cook, and she always makes me great food, so I’m looking forward to it.
Anything else you want to talk about?
I am super excited to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m so excited, it’s gonna be amazing. That moment when we first see the bridge, it’s gonna be crazy. There’s gonna be tears on that bridge. It’s gonna be fun.
(A reminder that any unfamiliar terms can be found in our handy I4K dictionary.)