Day 4, 5 6 Yakima, Sunnyside and Kennewick Sea to Sea

Joan D along the Yakima river on Canyon Rd


Scenery along road to Sunnyside
Barb Mellema myself and Anne Mushumanski with mud on our faces
Hank and I at Zillah CRC parked in front of Senior parking sign

Cyclists working on their bikes
Bill Den Harder and Ed Witvoet on motor bike. Ed really enjoyed his day on the bike


Peleton meeting at Riverside Christian School. Ed giving us directions for the next days ride

At Deception Falls. Great spot
Bert, Lavone Rose and Dini taking a break
road to Yakima

Our internet has not been working well at camp so I am hoping I can get this update on this morning at our host home. So far so good. Learning lots about blogging from other. Thanks to call for your comments and prayers. We know that God is with us and feel blessed. This tour I think will have a greater impact than the Sea to Sea in 2005. Cyclists are really going out to their way to hand out our business cards that explain what we are doing and why. Lots of people are saying what amazing thing to do.

Day 6 July 5 Sea to Sea Sunnyside to Kennewick 50 m/ 80 km

Riding time was 3 hours 41 minutes distance we rode 51.77 miles.
It is Saturday today and we have biked 6 days already. Tomorrow we have a day off. Everyone is looking forward to it.
The day started out a little overcast with a sprinkling of rain. It was cooler today so I started riding wearing my jacket. We started at 7 AM and finished at 12 noon. I started with Joan Doonsplet and Hank and ended the day with Joan, Bob and Lisa Brouwer. It was a great ride through orchards, vineyards and agricultural fields with lots of irrigation. The temperature was very comfortable so the whole ride was great for everyone. Area that is not irrigated is very dry and desert.
We stopped for coffee and pie in Benton City at mile 30. It was a great stop and a couple handed me a $5 bill as a donation.
We were greeted in camp by the local church with refreshing cool lemonade and homemade chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies. This really hit the spot. When I arrived, I was immediately interviewed by the local TV station, which is affiliated with ABC. Apparently he had been waiting for me, as I am the media spoke person for the tour. He also interviewed Bob and Lisa Brouwer and filmed the unloading and setting up of camp. It would be interesting to see if ABC picks up the story as we bike across the country and give the tour more exposure to communicate our message of hope for the poor and ending the cycle of poverty.
Kennewick is very spread out along the valley. The Snake Ride and Columbia River come together here. The Columbia flows into the Pacific which is west, but ride were we are camping it is flowing east. We are camping in Columbia Park, which is right along the Columbia River. Hank and I did take a brief swim in the river to cool down but the water was very cold. There are no showers here so either you take a swim to get cleaned up and or take a shuttle to a local health club where we can take showers.
Today Hank and I signed up to be hosted by a local family. They will do our laundry and provide us a bed and breakfast. Although we are being hosted we still set up our tent to get it dry from the previous nights rain and to have a place to store our bikes since we are gone overnight.

Day 5 July 4th Sea to Sea Yakima to Sunnyside 41 miles/66 km

Flats 22, accidents 3. More flats happen on rainy days as things stick to our wet tires and work their way in much easier. We were warned to watch for these weeds that through off thistles that look like a goats head. They have two horn like things that are very sharp and could give us many flat tires.
Again another great ride through some beautiful country. There were vineyards and farm lands that were being irrigated. We noticed fields of hops as a very common crop here. The temperature was very comfortable for riding. We were told they had had a whole week of temperatures over 100. Today it was raining but we did not mind it at all. It was a relief from the hot sun.

Young people relaxing in the cool of the Riveside Christian School in Yakima

Locals said it never rains here this time of year and really enjoyed the rain and lower temperatures. We too appreciated this. The Lord was providing for us. Hank really liked this much better and had a very good ride. The extreme heat is very hard for him. We both got out of camp by 7 AM.

We had a refreshing stop in Zillah where the local church provided fresh cherries, watermelon, bananas, coffee , water, lemonade, snacks. The church here is small, but great people. From the church we could see Mt Rainer in the distance. It was neat to see as we did not expect to see it from such a great distance. Hank and I parked at the Senior Citzens parking at Zillah
At Zillah we found a scale in the ladies bathroom, which we all found interesting as none of us had ever seen a scale in a church’s bathroom before. We all got a chance to see if our weight is down. So far I am not down at all. Kitchen crew is serving us excellent food
I again arrived before the gear trucks. A group of us decided to find some good coffee and went back to a restaurant gas station that had OK coffee. It was cool inside so about 20 of us stayed for a while. It was starting to get hot again but not as hot as Monday and Tuesday.
When we arrived in camp, we immediately took pictures of each other as many of us were cover in mud from the spray of other bikes in front of us. Getting covered in mud happens when we ride in a paceline. The bike in front throws up a spray to the person behind. We tried to get pictures of the dirtiest. I did not look at myself, but I must have been pretty dirty as a number of people wanted pictures of myself and several others. I had mud splatter over my glasses and was having difficulty seeing towards the end of the ride.
All our bikes were covered in dirt from the rain and everyone worked on cleaning their bikes. As it was a short riding day, this gave all of us lots of time to do a good job cleaning and oiling our bikes. Many of the cyclists had never cleaned their bikes they way they were doing today. Many of them were learning for the first time how to properly care for their bikes.

People cleaning their bikes after our dirty ride into Sunnyside

We were greeted in camp by a local person from the church, who gladly drove a group of us around town. We got to see the town a little bit. She showed us some murals painted by local Indian artists. Unfortunately when we had more time we could not find them to take pictures. Several of them were very interesting.
Sunnyside is 75% Hispanic. The people did comment to us that they do have a high crime rate here. Apparently the area churches have banded together and are praying for the community and working together to try and reduce the crime. There are many migrants here because of the fruit and vegetable industry that requires shortterm workers. Mexicans have come up from the south and now are staying here rather than leaving to other communities.
As a precaution we all put our bikes in the gym. We did not want to see any bikes stolen.
The local CRC church treated us to a great supper. They had chips and salsa, watermelon and vegetables as appetizers before serving us tacos and salad and strawberry shortcake. We held our peleton meeting at the school. At 830 we walk over to the church for fireworks and rootbeer floats. By the time we got back to camp it was 1030 and most of us were very tired and hit the bed. Only the young people had more energy and decided to go out on the town. Oh to be young.

Day 4 Sea to Sea Ellensberg to Yakima 42 m/ km

What a great day to ride. The scenery was spectacular. We rode down the Yakima Canyon along the Yakima River. The area is very dry with little vegetation on the hillside. Along the canyon we saw irrigated fields and lots of orchards. We saw black conttonwood trees and olive trees growing along the Yakima River. Some cyclists saw deer and big white horned sheep.
It was hot and dry but I managed to get in at 1030 and Hank got in before noon so we missed the heat of the day on the road. It felt so good to be in early so so we had time to ourselves and were able to just sit and relax, snooze a little , do some shopping and sit and talk to people without feeling rushed.
We did have a storm last night. People woke up in the middle of the night due to strong winds, thunder and rain. In addition we sprinklers go off and 6 tents got very wet.