Day 4 - Winthrop to Lake Chelan

Today we left Winthrop on a nice downhill run to Twisp and Hank's Country Store for more great breakfast sandwiches and coffee. We also loaded up on lunch supplies and followed the Twipd-Carlton Road along the Methow River to Carlton where we are dumped back on to Highway 153 to Methow and Pateros where we find a nice little country store for some refreshments and rest. There we meet a motorcyclist heading back to Seattle who gives us some great information about the road ahead. We also meet a retired serviceman who got tireed of hiking the Pacific Coast Trail and decided to take our same Sierra Cascades route from Canada all the way to Mexico. Of course, being 47 and carring 22 lbs (as opposed to our 40) he blows by us latter at one of our many rest stops, never to be seen again.

Now we follow Highway 97 and the Columbia River south towards Chelan and the traffic and heat pick up considerably. To add to the misery, there are some long, gradual climbs and some afternoon headwinds. We finally make the city of Chelan and resupply fro dinner and tomorrow's breakfast and then it is on for 10 more miles to Lake Chelan State Park. This is complicated by the fact that the closest beer stop is 6 miles from the park so we must add some weight to a beautiful rolling ride along the south coast of Celan. We make the park about 5 and, lucky for us, had reservations as the campground is jammed full. We end up camped closer to our neighbors than to each other but, amazingly, the campground falls dead silient a 10 and we retire after what was supposed to be an "easy" 72 miles. It turned out to be an excellant decision to push on te extra 14 miles the day before, as we would have never made it 86 miles.