Introduction
This is an 8-day motel bike tour in north central Washington, USA. The start/finish point is the farm town of Ephrata which is an easy one day drive from my house in southwest Oregon.
The state of Washington is known as the Evergreen State but the middle of Washington is actually quite arid. Select Satellite view in the map below and you will see that the route is mostly brown. Most of the loop is in low elevation desert environments in the rain shadow of the Cascade range. Only a small portion of the loop climbs into pines near lake Chelan.
My wife described the route to her auto mechanic. His reply: it's all desert and it's crazy to go in July. I'm going to the desert in July but it's northern Washington, not Arizona. I expect temperatures in the 90's, but hopefully not triple digits. Late August or early September would have more pleasant weather but higher risk for extreme wildfire smoke.
In late June and early July this region had a long spell of record-breaking hot weather. Far too hot for bicycling in the desert, so I waited until the weather returned to normal. I made motel reservations for a 16-23 July tour after the 10-day weather forecast predicted temperatures below 100F/38C.
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Columbia
The western and northern part of the route is mostly along the Columbia river and a tributary called the Okanogan river. The Columbia river has a huge watershed that gives it the 4th largest flow volume in North America. The river meanders, but flows generally southwest from the Canadian Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean. In this region the big river is below 1000 feet elevation in a desert canyon.
Coulee
The southeastern part of the loop is in the Grand Coulee region where the desert landscape was sculpted when ice-age glaciers diverted the Columbia river into the desert canyon. The glaciers also created giant reservoirs. When each ice age ended, the glacial dams disintegrated and walls of water flowed southwest towards the Pacific Ocean. Hundreds of feet deep for weeks. The scouring effects are still plainly visible 10,000 years after the last flood. The route from Ephrata to Grand Coulee is a deeply eroded dry river bed.
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Chelan
The western part of the loop makes a detour to the nation's 3rd deepest lake, Lake Chelan. The long narrow glacial lake threads from the desert deep into the Cascade range. It's the only part of the route that is crowded with tourists. The lake is a popular and upscale resort area.
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Circuit
The tour is called a circuit because it makes a loop and because it passes five big hydroelectric dams on the Columbia river, including Grand Coulee dam which has the largest electrical generating capacity in the US.
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Ancestral Home
This region is the ancestral home of 12 indigenous tribes that are now combined into the Colville Confederated Tribes. I spent most of day 4 pedaling through the 1.4 million acre Colville Indian reservation (box in map below) which is only a tiny fraction of their ancestral homeland. My tour route passes through 7 of the homelands.
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Easy?
The route mostly follows rivers and lakes, so the terrain is easy. I scheduled a rest day before day 4, the longest and hilliest day. High temperatures and wildfire smoke are the biggest potential complications.
Planning
The route was planned months in advance. The original plan was a longer route that goes farther south to Frenchman's Coulee and Hanford Reach National Monument. The eastern half of the longer loop is mostly on the Coulee Corridor National Scenic Byway, which seemed appealing.
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Unfortunately, I-90 is the only route through Frenchman's Coulee and the remainder of the southern extension is mostly busy highways through flat irrigated farm lands of the Columbia Basin Project. It would fit the theme to see the water being used, but I decided that pedaling 3 days through irrigated farms would be boring. Instead, I found a scenic shortcut on back roads in Moses Coulee.
The route was planned months in advance but lodging was booked only a few days in advance when I was confident that temperatures would be tolerable.
I pedaled the Okanogan and Columbia river route (most of days 5-7) during previous bike tours. The remainder of the route is places I have never seen. Thanks to Greg Garceau for introducing me to bike touring in the Grand Coulee region.
Getting There
On July 15 I drove my Prius 480 miles to Ephrata. Earlier I called the Oasis RV park offering to pay to park, and they told me about an adjacent city-owned overflow lot where I could park 7 nights for free. I have learned that it's easy to find a place to park in a farm town, and sometimes impossible to find a place to park in a resort town.
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2 years ago
Good luck with your summer 2022 plans. Interesting that you plan such a long tour without seeing an ocean. A few years ago I pedaled east from San Diego planning to end the tour in San Antonio. I couldn't resist making it a Southwest US Coast to Coast tour, so I continued on to Corpus Christi. I doubt you would succumb to the same thoughts if you start in Prineville, though.
2 years ago