Friday June 12, 2015

A lovely ride today. Although when I woke up at 6:00 am I was still tired, I snuggled into my lovely hubby and fell straight back to sleep until 7:55!! We didn’t leave the motel until 10:00 am. The latest we have started in a very long time. We knew we had a relatively short ride to Yelm or McKenna, if the request for a warmshowers host in McKenna was successful.

We found our way out of Centralia and onto the 507 very easily, it was a flat road through farm country. We headed out to Tinonen to find the rail trail to Yelm.

When we got to Tinonen, we stopped in at the gas station for directions to the start of the rail trail.

As usual and for reasons that are beyond us, local councils do not advertise their great rail trails. You have to go in search for the trail-head. It was a great rail-trail, paved for 24 kms all the way into Yelm.

We passed through two Towns and there were directions to restrooms and restaurants if you wanted to come away from the trail.

One of the things we enjoy about being on a rail trail (apart from the peace and quiet) are the various plaques along the way giving you information on the area.

Most of the rail bridges in this area are wooden tressle bridges. There was always lots of lumber to use.

When we arrived in Yelm we headed to the library, to use the internet. No response from our warmshowers host in McKenna, it looked as though we were going to have to cycle another 20 kms to the camp-site. Then our road angel arrived – Sarah – offered us a spot to pitch our tent at her place just outside of Yelm. She has 10 acres and we could use her shower and pitch the tent. We took her up on the offer after we had been to Safeway to get groceries.

Her 10 acre small-holding is only 5 kms from Town and has a very large bull mastiff ‘guarding’ the place. Sasha is a very large, scaredy cat, she has a big woof but barks and runs away at the same time.

Sarah has four cows, two pigs, one horse, chickens, and doves and about 5 acres of woodlot. We had a lovely chat with her after we had showered, she had travelled extensively when she was younger but has been in Yelm Washington for the past 20 years and has lived at her small farm for 10 years.

I was able to check the email and our warmshowers host emailed us at 7:00 pm to say he was home and we could stay with him. He offered to give us a route for the next day, but we had everything planned and were nicely settled in at Sarah’s “farm”.

Tomorrow night we are staying near Seattle with a couple we met in Carpenteria, they had the tear-drop trailer which we really liked.