Day 15 - Dealing with change - and weather

We actually slept a bit later than normal today, so when we got up we were kind of rushing to get packed, fed and out the door. I did my usual weather check on my Ipod, and it said current weather was mostly cloudy, with clearing expected later today, Temp was 61. When we went to pack the bikes however, the parking lot was wet - meaning it had rained over night, so right away we knew we would need to start out in our rain gear.

Wet start to the day

Our plan for the day had us taking the interstate south a ways, then getting off on some scenic road that would take us by Mt Ranier, then back out to the interstate, then south a couple exits, then back off for a 50 mile run up to Mt St. Helens. Well, as soon as we got on the interstate, it began to rain - lightly, but steadily. When we got off onto the scenic route we were in and out of rain, but then Larry's GPS alerted us to a road closure - the road we were intending to take. We weren't able to figure out exactly where the closure was so we continued on until we came to the detour. By this time it was raining harder and steady. Even though we were pretty close to Mt Rainier we couldn't see any of it. We continued on and followed our route back out to the interstate where we gassed up, and stopped for lunch. The sky was clearer here so we also got out of the rain gear. After lunch we went down the I-5 but when we came to the exit for Mt St. Helens, I decided it just wasn't worth a 100 mile detour to hope the weather would be better, so we skipped it and continued on down I-5.

Since we are running a bit behind schedule we figured to press hard today to try to make up some time. We ran 500+ miles and made it to Grants Pass, OR - just 60 miles north of the California border.

So we had to deal with weather and changing plans which isn't all that unusual on a trip like this. Looking ahead another route we planned to take was CA-120 through Yosemite Park, but that is currently closed due to wild fires so we may well have to make further route revisions in the coming days.

Tomorrow's plan is to continue south and get close to the start of our Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) route, and than start that on Monday.

Added GPS Track for the day: