Day 3 - Diablo Lake to Winthrop

The climbs begin! Got an early start and had a monster climb right off. Nice views of the lake and the mountains but only able to enjoy on the frequent rest stops. At one of the stops a motorcyclist coming the other way stopped to talk and give us some info about what was to come. He told us they were working on the roads at the passes and there was 30 miles of chipseal (kind of gravel that the prees into fresh tar). So some of the most spectatcular riding in Washington is lessened by the road surface. Turns out to be not so bad as they had closed off several miles of the road and we got to ride in the middle of the road with no traffic.
Started some brutal climbing up the first pass (Rainy) at 4,800 feet. It was great to finally make it to the top, but we knew we had some downhill before climping up to Washington Pass at 5,400. As we got towards the top, our motorcyle friend came back by with some cold Coke for us! Boy, did that help. Finally crested Washington and had a long, screaming downhill to Mazama, our intended destination. On the way down, were held up briefly by a wreck between a motorcycle and a bicycle. It did not look good and made us all think it could have easily been one of us.
When we got to Mazama, there was a great little county store there with excellent sandwiches and cold gatoraid. Not many places to stay though, and since we had a planned 88 mile day for tomorrow, we decided to press on to Winthrop. Got a nice motel on the river and managed to hook up with Dan Kuperberg and his wife Sally, who run a B & B in Winthrop. They treated us at the local Mexican Resturant, and, amazingly, Dan was going out for a 15 mile training run in the dark after dinner since he is training for a 100 mile run in Europe.