The Zipsicle

Ahhh… A day we’ve been both dreading and looking forward to reaching – the last day of our trip. Bittersweet. We’ve traveled almost 4,600 miles, so far, and have seen a lot of beautiful country and many places we’d love to spend more time visiting. But, we miss our six (yes that’s 6) cats and we know our lawn has become a hayfield. We briefly discuss just chucking it all and turning south but, of course, that’s not what we do. We carry on with our

We head westward out of Omak and begin to climb into the hills. It’s beautiful country here, although dry, but we’ve been here several times before so the scenery doesn’t hold our attention as much as it has recently. As we’re descending into the Methow Valley we come up behind this intriguing trike.

We follow it down the curving mountain road and learn that the trike can really move out as we see it pass a car or two ahead of us. We’ve got to really work the Zipsicle to keep up. Fortunately, as we pull into Twisp, Washington we see the thing pull into a gas station and we quickly follow where we meet the fellow driving it. He built it himself and it is powered by a Volkswagon engine with a motorcycle front end. The handlebars (and attached dash unit) lift up to allow him to enter and exit the vehicle. Note the sidewinder missiles and the rotating cannon on the front. Quite a nice job! After talking with him a bit and admiring his ingenuity and craftsmanship we’re on our way again.

We head west back over Washington and Rainy Passes where we encounter very hazy conditions from forest fires in the area. Still, the mountains around here are very beautiful; no denying it.

It’s time for another butt break so we stop in at the overlook above Diablo Lake. The green, glacial waters always look great and we know that we’re getting closer to home.

Sure enough, we arrive home safely where we’re greeted with large yawns from our cats. Jax and I congratulate ourselves on a safe and wonderful trip (4,282 miles all told) and wonder if it’s too soon to start planning next year’s trip….

Ride safe,
Zippo and Jax

Sorry for the delay in finishing off our travel tale. So much to do, so little time…
Anyway, we’re on the next to the last day of our trip and today we ride from Clarkston, Washington to Omak, Washington. It’s another hot day and we’re again wearing our Coolvests and glad to have them. We’re riding most of the day through rolling grainfields. Here’s a look at them with the combines running:

Jax spends much of the day taking pictures of the barns we pass. Some of them are in great shape, such as this typical “Big, Red, Barn”:

Others have a rather non-typical shape!

And other barns have just plain seen better days:

Jax spotted this fine, antique tractor in Uniontown, Washington. Shortly after this we stopped for a break along side the road and managed to lose one of our Alaska Leather’s Sheepskin buttpads. Oh, well. Our buns are much tougher now than they were when we started this trip:

In Colfax, Washington Jax caught a quick image of “The Codger Pole”. I looked it up online and it’s pretty interesting. You can read about it here

We crossed the bridge next to the Grand Coulee Dam and continued our journey north to Omak. They have a pretty good laser light show on the dam face in the evenings:

Just outside of Omak, Jax managed to catch this Sasquatch on film (digitally speaking!):

We arrived in the late afternoon in Omak and quickly checked into our hotel. Out total mileage for the day was only about 240 miles – a very easy day. Dinner tonight was a pizza delivered to our air-conditioned room while we watched something called “Extreme Logging” on TV. No wonder we don’t watch TV at home!:

Ride safe,
Zippo and Jax