Thursday 20^th May, Red lion Hotel, Yakima, Washington.

15.00

Just after writing the previous entry, the rain returned and stayed for the rest of the day. The road on which we would have been travelling,e had we continued to Yakima, experienced tornado force winds and traffic on the Interstate had to stop. Another woman staying at the hotel said we would have been “blown to Seattle”. I think I might have taken the risk. .

It meant that we couldn’t get back into Prosser and ended up eating in a pizza bar/pub in the middle of a nearby cluster of places that only exist to serve the motel trade. It wasn’t too bad, although there was a mix up with my order and I got a small pizza rather than the medium .I had asked for. The waiter and chef both apologised profusely and told us to “ snack on the small one until the other one arrives”. Somehow I can’t see that happening in England. I couldn’t finish both pizzas, so they suggested that I took most of the large one away in a box. Mike scoffed at this. He also scoffed most of the pizza the next day, on the road to Yakima.

We finished eating at 8.30 and there was nothing else to do. There were no bars anywhere and it was too wet to go for a walk. So it was back to the room and to bed with Graham Greene.

Today was a bit tedious. Just windy enough to be annoying. Basically one long road, mercifully flat. We cycled through the Yakima valley, full of fruit farms (mainly cherries) and vineyards (sorry, wineries). Several fields had long poles waiting to have something grow up them. Mike thinks hops, which seems a reasonable guess.

It all looks fairly prosperous, which makes the ugliness of the outskirts of Yakima a real shock. Several miles of really ugly development. Cheap bars and fast food places, casinos tattoo parlours and tacky little shops. Then when you get to the centre of town, where Main Street should be, there’s a little overpass across a railway depot, surrounded by factories making breeze-blocks and concrete mouldings. As we climbed the overpass, a poor woman, drunk, mad or both was weaving her way through the heavy traffic, stopping every now and then to yell abuse the drivers. Cars and lorries were swerving dangerously to avoid her. It seemed to sum the whole place up. The places on the other sides of the tracks were a little better but we then discovered that all the motels were behind us and we had to retrace our steps back into Sin City.

We checked in to the Red Lion Hotel, which is comfortable and in a relatively calm part of town. It has its own restaurant and bar so I think it highly unlikely we will l be venturing out again today.

Although today was only 50 miles (and yesterday only 30) we have both said how tired we have felt. It’s probably psychological as we are getting near the end.. I fully expect to get a sudden resurgence of energy when we reach Seattle and I have finally hurled my bike into the Pacific.

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