Republic to Colville

Miles 56.6
Ride time 4:35
Elevation gain 4115'

Today was a really nice ride, we left Republic under clear and cool conditions. We had only a short downhill warmup, then we started our climb. It was not as steep though, or at least it did't seem like it. Maybe we are all getting in better shape! It was a beautiful ride, at one point we were riding along this steam that was rushing parallel tom the road. At times there would be places where it would cascade down in waterfalls. We saw a very large deer as it crossed the road. The deer at home are about half that size!
We got to the top of Sherman Pass, which was at 5575'. Then we had over six miles of amazing downhill. The road was good, there was a good shoulder, but really no traffic. It seemed to go on forever. What a blast! There is nothing like crusing downhill on a bike, it is like flying. It was a litlle cold as I had left my jacket behind, but not unbearable.
We rode through a very pretty valley near the town of Kettle Falls, lots of green fields, flowers and great views of the surrounding mountains. In the distance we could see the snowy patch of one of the mountains we had climbed up earlier.
We turned at the intersection of highway 395-so funny as this same highway runs to California on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.
We had to walk our bike across the bridge that spanned the Columbia River at Roosevelt Dam, what an amazing body of water.
After crossig the bridge we took a nice quiet sideroad. We passed a big Boise log processing facility that had giant piles of logs everywhere with more comong in on logging trucks to be added to the pile.
We rode on in to Colville by early afternoon, but it was already really warm. They have a pool here, but it was indoors and it was stifiling in there so we all settled for a shower and then a salad at a sandwich shop nearby.
Tomorrow is going to be a fairly long day, but not so much climbing. We are almost to Idaho!