Ok. Its all kind of blending together so I’m going to try to get this straight. Started at the best dispersement campsite in the world (BDCW) just outside of chelan at about 8:30. Things started out a little slow. Scenery was nice, but starting to look like typical eastern side of the cascade fare. I’m sure it’s beautiful and interesting if you don’t hate Bend. Stopped for gas at Carter which is about at the halfway point for stage 5. Weird scene going on.  For one, there was a flyer for a No Kings rally posted on the door; you don’t need to be a sociologist to figure that this town of about 40 people in eastern Washington, well, leaned Trump. Then there was some goth girl walking around with tattoos on her face swinging a Stanley thermos around kind of doing fly-bys of the gas station to see what’s up. Anyway. Got gas because the bdr site warned there was no gas in Conconulley – the endpoint for stage 5, and I couldn’t figure out what was past stage 5 bedsides a lot of nothing. 

The bdr peeps were correct, there was no gas in Conconulley.  I got there about 1:00. You can see where the pumps were because they’re wrapped in garbage bags in front of the eponymous general store, which is run (or staffed) by an old dude who hates it. Or hates me. I bought a warm ass soda from him that I didn’t want so I could quiz him about where the next gas station might be on the bdr (and yes, I’m sure he knows what this is because about 10,000 people do this a year and they all stop there asking about gas because its the last stop on stage 5 and he doesn’t have any) but he was to occupied being a dick to some old confused people who stumbled in to say much more to me beyond that he didn’t know what I was talking about. 

So being that there was no cell service in Conconulley I satellite texted Kara and she verified  there was gas in the town of Loomis which was along the way. She also took up precious satellite bandwidth to tell me the girl she talked to at the Loomis Kwik Mart sounded like “a Loomis 7”, like on a 1 to 10 scale. Well loomis, here I come.

From here the ride got a lot better. It started to look, feel and smell like Canada. The roads turned to white gravel, the trees got pinyer and more fragrant, and it got colder. The mountains in this area still had snow, and the burn areas were smaller and farther apart. All in all, I got really beautiful.

I rolled onto the Loomis kwik mart at about 5, where upon I identified that the girl who answered the phone was likely a Loomis 9, but a chronological 15. There was a faded “Biden did this” sticker on the pump, but there was some irony in that today unleaded was just shy of 5 bucks a gallon. 

So now I’m at the Palmer lake campground about 10 minutes up the road from Loomis where it’s raining lightly every 7 minutes. I set up camp and took a very brisk bath in the lake. Tomorrow it’s on to Canada and the end of the WABDR.