Another beautiful day with temps in the 70s. I made very good time because the first 44 miles of today’s route were flat or even slightly downhill.
There were several fairly long ascents thereafter, and one memorable 16% downhill.
Most of today’s route was along lightly-trafficked and scenic back roads.
The ugly exceptions were near the cities.
There’s apparently a significant amount of drug abuse in Centralia. My guess is the poison of choice here is meth.
On my way out of town, I saw one toothless, shirtless (possibly completely naked?) lunatic sitting on the passenger-side window ledge of a speeding car, the whole upper half of his body hanging out, waving both hands in the air and howling with glee.
“Whee!”
Another odd, scraggly bird driving a rust-bucket pickup truck accosted me several times, even tailing me slowly, beeping his horn and yelling at me to stop. (I was in my granny gear at the time, slowly working my way up a hill.) He finally gunned it to get ahead, pulled a quick U-turn and parked on the other side of the road. Then he stepped got out of his truck and walked toward me across the highway to try to cut me off and stop me. I stepped up my pace to elude him.
He shouted that he was my campground manager and needed to show me how to get to the campground.
No way was I following this nut job anywhere.
I told him I was going to a different campground 20 miles away, then tried to ignore him as I continued to ride slowly away.
He finally gave up and drove a few hundred yards ahead, pulling off into some trees on the roadside. He yelled at me once more as I passed but I just kept on chugging.
“I’m going to a different campground,” I said again.
Not sure what his real plan was but I wasn’t interested in hanging around to find out.
It came as an immense relief to me that he didn’t continue following.
But I checked my rearview mirror regularly for many miles thereafter to make sure he hadn’t taken up the chase again.
The Lewis & Clark State Park campground, where I stayed that night, was peaceful and quiet and filled with decent family campers, thank goodness.
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