Our campsite at Washington State Park

Day 5 - Ironically, I didn't sleep as well in our comfortable motel room as I have on the ground! I did stay up until nearly midnight trying to get photos downloaded from the trip so far. It was pretty frustrating. I have given up trying to put pictures where I want them. Sometimes they go where I direct them, but many times they just jump someplace else! In addition, sometimes this program asks me if I want to caption a photo, but most of the time it does not. I have given up trying to figure it out. If Geri and I ever blog again for a big adventure, we will select a more user friendly blog site. We ate a big motel breakfast before getting on the road again, but a light drizzle did not encourage us to be very efficient and we were not on the road until a little after 10:00 AM. There was no wind today and Hwy 47 had a smooth, wide shoulder now as we headed south from Washington. We had this shoulder over 20 miles, but we did have our share of trouble today. First, the drive chain came off of the front sprocket of the bike and it got bent by the pedal. I managed to straighten it out enough so we could travel again, but now we are having some bad gear slippage. I feel certain the chain needs to be replaced, but there are not any bike shops in this area. It will have to wait until later to be repaired properly. Second, we got caught in a rainstorm that stopped our travel for over half an hour. Fortunately, we were able to find shelter before we got very wet and the rain did usher in a cold front of cooler weather. Third, we had a flat tire on the trailer. That is the first flat I have ever had with that trailer since I bought it, but fortunately it changed very easily. Fourth, we had another rear flat tire on the tandem. The only good thing about that is that I am getting very good at changing it. That was our last problem of the day except for the hills. The closer we got to our goal for the night, the steeper and longer the hills became. The last climb to Washington State Park, where we camped, was the longest of the day, but despite all our trouble today we arrived at the Park by 5:30 PM. I was surprised our average speed today was as high as it was (10.3 mi/hr), but we did have some fast downhill coasts and hit our top speed for the trip so far of 40.5 mi/hr! It might seem strange, but Geri and I prefer hills to level ground (like the Katy Trail) for bicycle travel. On level ground you have to pedal all the time and never get to rest, plus we really like long speedy descents. Geri did some phone magic today and actually downloaded a photo of me during the rain. Now we just have the see if she can do it again!