Finale

Oh lordie, the longest stretch of non-blogging to reminisce about yet. luckily my grandpa already asked me to cover the final week and a half so my memory has already been jogged.. thanks Gramps.
first off let me tell you, EVERYONE should go on a long bike tour at some point in your life... at least if you enjoy biking. i still can't believe how amazing this summer has been. i would love to just keep biking and biking and biking. i can't even explain how happy i am that i was able to spend the past 80 days like this.

so i believe the day after we left missoula we made it to a campsite called Colgate Licks. En route we crossed into Idaho and stopped at the visitors center which has free hot chocolate =0) I also realized near the end of the day that I left my raincoat at Brandt's house. Luckily my mom convinced me to bring a "deluxe" rain poncho that ended up coming in very handy only one day after the raincoat was lost.
idaho is not completely covered in potatoes. if you're on route 12 you will see lots of old growth cedars, which mature at 400-500 years old but then live up to 3,000 years. i felt like we were about 12 inches tall when we were walking amongst them. there are also wild blackberries growing all along the side of the highway, and some other fruits too! good times for a biker!
at Colgate Licks we met a man named Chris who was headed back to Portland after a rock climbing trip in montana. we sat around a fire together and had some good conversation. the next morning we went over to chris's campsite for coffee, and he also gave us some cinnamon rolls and a chocolate bar. before he drove away he left us with some fine words of wisdom: "do not open the chocolate bar in the wind".
huh? why not? phil's hypothesis was that smell is very important for taste, so we wouldn't enjoy the chocolate bar fully with the wind ruining our sense of smell. i thought that sounded pretty reasonable. but in fact, when we opened the chocolate bar that night, we discovered that Chris had slipped a $20 bill inside the wrapper for us. that was one of the nicest things anyone has done for us on this trip... if you're reading this Chris, thank you so much, that was amazing.
From Colgate Licks we continued among the cedars and reached a trail to Weir hot springs, where we soaked in the 106 degree water on a fairly cool morning. we met up with Mo from The Lab in Missoula, taking her family who were visiting her from texas to the hot springs. as we left the hot springs the weather went downhill and before long it was raining raining raining. my poncho came in handy, and so did a historic ranger station that we stopped at and warmed up by their wood stove. we stopped at a picnic site off the road outside kooskia to camp for the night.
from kooskia we got to the twin cities of the west, on the idaho/washington border, Lewiston and Clarkston, but not without a little help. we hitched a ride for about 35 of the 75 miles due to a late start and the first of many headwinds, which can gust up to 25mph. the ride actually felt amazing! we got to skip a lot of highway riding, too. we got dropped off at the lewiston city park along the snake river. lots of people asked us about our trip there, and no one seemed to mind that we had picked a not-quite-real camping spot for the night.
from lewiston/clarkston we stayed in washington, and rode about 60 or 70 miles to dayton. the winds and the hills abounded and we realized that the last few days of our ride were going to be a little more difficult than ya might think.
in dayton we were inspired to leave by sprinklers turning on at our campsite, which you might recall would not be the first time we were awakened in this manner. but it was good that we got an early start because phil was able to make a connection with a couple in Hermiston, OR, so we had to make 80 miles to get there that night. we followed the columbia river for several very warm hours, and our warmshowers hosts Ken and Nancy met us on their bikes a few miles from their home to make sure we wouldn't get lost. while we were showering nancy finished cooking up one of the best meals we had on the whole trip... fajitas with the most amazing ingredients. Nancy is all about good food: http://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=Articles&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=9CBC5AFD93494603A3695421A2E0CC7F or if that doesn't work you can just google Nancy Gummer. she and her husband do a lot of bike touring and they use a Burley trailer like Phil, only they use it for their dog Toby, who has his own sleeping bag to relax in for the ride.
Nancy took us to a bike shop on her way to work and Phil got some new tires and 8 more patches because we had pretty much used up our supply. we went to a bakery and ate/purchased way too many pastries on our way out of hermiston, and another windy hilly day got us into roosevelt. roosevelt is the site of a landfill where seattle's trash gets sent, and luckily we decided to pitch our tent right at an intersection where all the trucks drive between the trains that deliver the trash and the landfill that receives it. 100s of semis later we were happy to leave that campsite behind. phil, of course, slept thru them all passing, much to the surprise of the truckers themselves. roosevelt has hundreds of wind towers and it and its surrounding areas are getting a lot more installed as well! we got to talk to a man who delivers the wind turbine parts to their sites.. it is a job and a half cuz those things are MASSIVE! the most wind power we had seen throughout the whole country was right here in the roosevelt area.
from roosevelt we made it to the Dalles via the freeway, which is towered over by mt. hood. the freeway is getting a bike lane painted in and we were possibly the first two riders to use it! the sunset stopped us in our tracks on this night, but eventually we made it to a good camping spot near a comfort inn, and possibly went swimming and hot tubbing to clean up a bit.
waking up after the Dalles we realized we had only one night of camping together left. we ended up at Ainsworth State park where we cooked pasta with onions and peppers and also had salad, bread, and a bottle of wine. we over-pressurized the stove to a fairly dangerous degree but it was still a completely successful dinner, the perfect one for the last night of camping.
the last day was a rough one for me. it was hard to be happy to be heading into portland because i definitely did not want this trip to be over. but we had a pretty sweet day following the old highway past several waterfalls, including Multnomah Falls, which is over 600 feet high! we decided to risk taking a road that was closed to thru traffic, but after a 6 mile climb we discovered that it was closed due to a landslide and that we would not be allowed thru. so we had a little 12 mile detour on the day of my flight, making the day 47 miles instead of 35. we still got into portland with plenty of time though, and phil helped me box up my bike to ship to my friend Maya so she can go on a bikeride. we got chinese food for dinner and bought 16 postcards at the marriott hotel to send to all our warmshowers hosts. after taking the light rail a pretty good distance to the airport, we spent our last couple of hours writing the postcards to everyone and just sitting there reminiscing and saying goodbye. eventually my flight was scheduled to leave in only 25 minutes and i could not put off leaving any longer. let me tell you, it was not an easy time. i had been thinking about it for awhile but it was still really hard for me to climb up those stairs to security and admit to myself that this adventure had definitely come to its conclusion. it took me about 15 minutes to check my saddle bags and go thru security, so i got to the gate with 10 minutes left before departure. i was definitely the last person to board.
so that's that! the best summer i could have dreamed of. thanks for readin' y'all =0)
my family wants their input:

Uncle Andy: "The last day was great because I knew I was seeing my family again."
Dana: "I really like your head." "You didn't smell that bad when we picked you up, until you picked up your arm."
Ryan: "Ryan did some special interpretive dances and talked in the third person."
David and Gloria: "I think it's amazing that you spent $0 on lodging. It must say something about the humanity and friendliness of the United States."