Julie and I rode South today in beautiful sunny and crisp Fall weather!
We made it to Centralia and Berry Fields Café. Just our luck, the special for today was hot turkey open-face sandwiches with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. Of course, we had to have it! Why? Because, for the last two rides and, now, including this ride, we have had the same thing for lunch. Never at the same restaurant. This is quickly becoming a Fall ride lunch tradition. Now that we have sampled three restaurant's versions of the hot turkey open-face sandwich, we feel qualified to declare a winner. Today's was, by far, the BEST!!! The bread was a thick toasted slice. Then a nice scoop of stuffing followed by a heaping pile of roasted turkey covered with delicious gravy. The mashed potatoes on the side were also covered with gravy. We both devoured every bit of it! Then, when the waitress mentioned they had pumpkin pie...need I say more?
Stomachs sated and water bottles filled, we headed back to the bikes. We were not quite at the half way point of the ride and it was already close to 2:00. Time to burn off some of our lunch before we burned off the remaining daylight hours.
We continued South for a short stretch. I was looking for Salzer Valley Rd., but all the side streets were dead ending at the train tracks. A nice (and slightly enebriated) gentleman gave us some workable directions. Although, we would have found it a short bit further. But, his way, we got to pick up our bikes and carry them across the tracks as a train was coming! Ah, the adventure of it!
We made it onto Salzer Valley and worked our way along the valley in the sunshine. There were very few cars. At one point, I stopped to take a photo and it was almost completely silent. No wind and no cars! Very nice!
We had one longish, but relatively gentle climb then down to Little Hanaford Rd. Then, following Teitzel Rd on the oops-we-didn't-have-enough-chip-seal-to-cover-the-whole-road-so-we-just-spread-it-out road surface, we came around to Big Hanaford Rd.
From there, the shortest way would be to go right and go past the steam plant and over Tono Rd. But, Tono has a couple of nasty climbs that we didn't feel like doing. So, instead we backtracked to Hwy 507.
Back in Tenino, we took Hwy 99 home. The sun was setting as we pulled in the driveway. Really, a gorgeous day!
Total Miles: 68.7 for me
72 for Julie
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