Tonasket-Loomis-Oroville Loop

After enjoying a wonderful ride in the little town of Pemberton, we spent our last day in Canada driving the scenic roads of British Columbia, which included climbing super steep, curvy mountain passes, meandering along the beautiful Lake Okanogan, and enjoying the quiet roads lined with endless orchards of apples, pears, peaches and cherries.

We crossed the border over Hwy 97 and stopped in the second town in the good ol' USA, Tonasket, Washington.

The map on the wall of the "visitor center" showed two perfect loop routes, and we picked the one most likely to be paved. One of many really great things about our travels is that we just look at maps, pick a route, and go for it. Sometimes its a bust - but lots of times we find wonderful rides; and this one was a true gem. 62 miles, 2300' of climbing with just two stop signs. We saw only a handful of cars along the way, as we rolled past five lakes and a river, and endless farmland and fruit orchards. Awesome.

One last comment about our travels in Canada: Clif Bars were $3!!! We'll NEVER again complain about the price of groceries in the USA! Eh?

CRANKWORX Live From Whistler BC

YOWZA!!! Whistler was ROCKIN' with tons of partying people, live bands, and the most INSANE mountain biking imaginable! Sheer good luck put us in Whistler just in time for Crankworx - a festival of all things down-hill, including the awesome Slopestyle freeriding. Check it out:

Dual Slalom: We saw Brian Lopes race the prelims - but he choked the finals!

This is Ryan Leach - the KING of Trials doing some incredible balancing tricks.

The Slopestyle was far and away the biggest crowd pleaser: Here's a "little" jump - only 15-20 feet maybe...

Everyone in the final round had to come off the jumbo-tron... a mere 25-30 feet...

and this is what happens when you biff the landing...

We did a lot of riding ourselves on the incredible trails around Whistler. Brian spent a day taking the lift/gondola up and enjoying the downhill bike park (and even saw a bear - yeah, a real one, just off the trail); and we also did some more epic cross-country trails. Here are some local shots:

We're on the road again, pointed towards home - but planning lots of stops along the way - including several days in the Bend/Sisters, Oregon area where the road and mountain biking just can't be beat. Stay tuned for more!

Oh! Canada!

Finally the sun came out -- and we've had two incredible days of mountain biking in beautiful Squamish, British Columbia. We're just South of Whistler (where we're headed tomorrow) in what the locals call the best mountain biking in BC.

EPIC (and endless) single track trails wind in and out of the woods, alongside rivers, around lakes, and meander across hillsides with incredible views of the surrounding mountains and amazing, colorful wildflowers! NOT for the feint-hearted, however... The local riders are in a whole other league! While the trails are listed as green for easy, blue for intermediate, black diamond for expert, and double black diamond for insanity - we found the blues really challenging and did quite a bit of hike a bike. The greens were a ton of fun though! Check it out:

Hello From Canada

It has been raining for six days straight and we're going a little stir crazy here... Especially since we're surrounded by world class mountain biking (which is why we came here, of course). The sun is supposed to come out tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for us! We're really ready to ride!

San Juan Island

In search of orcas, we took the ferry from Anacortes to San Juan Island. If you're lucky, you can stand on the shoreline and see the awesome animals just yards offshore. But (heavy sigh), they eluded us; as we managed to arrive exactly at the spot where they just WERE a few short minutes before we arrived ... and we never did see a single orca. Oh well. The ride around San Juan Island was a blast. Another great day on the road!

Tour de Seattle

Today we were treated to an awesome 95 mile Tour of Seattle by local rider, Jeff Tanka, who we met in March when he joined us for the Solvang Spring Tour.

Jeff knows all the ins and outs of this beautiful, bicycle-friendly City. We rode miles and miles of bike paths, raced around the local velodrome, crossed a lake on a floating bridge, pedaled through the tourist center of Seattle, enjoyed the beautiful Puget Sound, and more.

Here we are at Gasworks Park - a very popular ride start location.

Brian and Jeff above the floating bridge.

Thanks for a GREAT day, Jeff!

Brian Kicks Butt At The Creampuff

Congratulations to Brian, who finished in the top third at the Cascade Cream Puff, a 100-mile mountain bike race with over 16,000' of climbing, mostly on single track. Brian's time was a very impressive 12 hours! Many of the guys who finished in front were Pros!

The race is held in the Westfir / Oakridge area, which we just LOVED. The mountain biking is epic, and the road riding is absolutely world-class. We're definitely coming back here to ride soon - and also to scout potential routes for a week-long Tour. Oregon is one of our favorite places to ride! Here are some shots from Brian's race (I'd have taken more but I was super busy filling water bottles to hand off to the racers):

On the road again...

Greetings Friends! Welcome to our Blog!

We're off again - on our third annual Summer Vacation...
and so we decided to share our adventures via this Blog.

We left home on June 29th, and headed North, with our first stop in Weed, CA, just a few short miles north of Mt. Shasta. We did two super fun days of riding, on quiet roads with lots of climbing.

Now we're in Ashland, Oregon for a couple of days to visit family and, of course, ride. Ashland is home to the Mountain Lakes Challenge - one of the best centuries we've ever done. Although we missed it this year, we always enjoy riding here - both on and off road.

We'll next head to Westfir / Oakridge for about a week. Brian is getting ready to do an epic mountain bike race called the Cascade Creampuff!