July 1, 2013: MIM Day 16, Longview to Yelm, WA

The penultimate day of the final stage of Fred and Seth's Great Adventure. Our final night on the road is being spent in an unexpectedly exquisite Prairie Hotel in Yelm, WA, roughly 65 miles south of our destination on Mercer Island (just outside of Seattle). I guess everything is location. In a more touristy town, this room would go for at least twice the $90 we are paying here in Yelm.

Today's 78 mile ride was pretty uneventful, other than the time we spent in the enchanted forest. 

The Enchanted Forest

We rode through some pretty farm land, and went up lots of little hills, some of them rather steep. None was very long, but together they added up to about 2600 feet of climbing, mostly in the first half of the ride. The hills slowed us down, of course, so we were out there pedaling for six full hours. We got our first glimpses of Mt. Ranier but no photos... Oops, Fred just looked up through the large window in my room and noted that the mountain is right there! We immediately embarked on an impromptu expedition in a vain attempt to get some pictures without power lines or some other distraction in the foreground. No luck. We'll try to get some shots once we leave the immediate area of town in the morning. It is quite impressive.

Frustrated with our failure to capture Mt. Ranier, Fred noticed a volcano that looks about to erupt on the side of my nose, apparently the result of massive doses of sunblock during the day, and BreathRight strips at night. No worries, though. The seismologists have been alerted, haz-mat teams are standing by, and there should be no danger to anyone outside a 50 mile radius of my hotel room. That's a good thing, as there is no way that the national media will be covering anything other than the Zimmerman trial in the foreseeable future. Events like forest fires, typhoons, and nasal volcanoes will just have to take care of themselves in the meantime.

OK, now where was I? Did I mention World's Largest Egg? No? Well, you can see a picture of same below. I asked the young woman in the town of Winlock when the egg is supposed to hatch. She responded that they have been waiting 65 years, so far. In the meantime, she will keep watering it. All I could think of is that I would hate to run into the chicken that laid the damn thing.

The World's Largest Egg is in safe hands in Winlock, WA.

The historic jailhouse of Vader, WA, the ancestral family home of Darth Vader, Lord of Darkness.