On A Gold Wing and a Prayer: Day 5: Friday June 3, 2022

Today started out as an adventure. We woke to rain so we all geared up for wet riding and the realization that not all of us were going to be able to take the ferry together from Port Townsend to Coupeville to catch highway 20 through the North Cascades. The ferry did not have room for 4 motorcycles at the 0930 trip so Dave rode over to the ferry to catch the 0800 trip. He feasted on breakfast while he awaited our arrival. Dave was able to get a photo of me coming off the ferry. We all gathered up and around 1030 we were kickstands up and headed into the mountains. Due to the rain our ride was slower and more deliberate. The next big awakening happened when we were at a traffic light in Burlington WA. I was the lead bike stopped at the intersection waiting for our signal to change when all of a sudden a vehicle to my right started making a left hand turn on a yielding green light and a vehicle to my left was proceeding with the right of way green light straight through the intersection. The cars collided causing the turning car to spin around and settle about 10’ feet from me. My adrenaline was pumping pretty heavy and the feeling of helplessness just sitting on the bike frozen with no where to go was a bit unnerving. There didn’t appear to be any severely injured drivers so when our light turned green we drove around the vehicles just as a police car was arriving. We rode on and had rain off and on sometimes coming down pretty hard. The ride into the North Cascades is breathtaking and because of the rain we were sometimes in the clouds or just below them which made the scenery magical. The trees, rock formations and countless waterfalls around every corner was amazing. We rode to the summit and the temperature dropped to 46 degrees with rain. It was chilly but not bad because we were all geared up. There was still a lot of snow along the road and we rode past crystal blue pools of melting snow that unfortunately we couldn’t pull over and take photos of for safety reasons. After descending the mountains we rode by acres of apple orchards before arriving at our hotel for the evening. We met two couples from Vancouver BC who were riding BMW bikes and four other guys from Vancouver BC that were riding Harleys. The funny thing was they all knew each other but did not know they were riding into the USA. When I asked them how it was crossing the border into the USA the riders on the BMW's said it was quick and easy with the only question being from the customs agent "why you riding today, it's raining?"

We arrived at our hotel in Omak WA at 5:50. We rode 235 miles today.

Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.