The run for home.

I got into Bonnerdale and picked up my bike! It looks great. Mike did a great job on it.
But the weather was so hot and humid I felt really wrung out. (Makes me wonder how the hell I made it through 2 years in south-east Asia. I guess I was a couple of years younger back then.)

Anyhow, after loading up it was afternoon so I decided to get into some air conditioning, plan my route towards home and get a fresh start in the morning. I checked into the local motel where the owner recognized me from my previous stay there a month ago and told me the rates had gone up $4.00 since it was now "high season." I guess my minor celebrity of being a repeat customer didn't warrant a discount.

I walked down to the local Sonic Burger and did some carbo-loading for the ride home.
I'd never seen them before but Sonic Burger is all over the south and they actually have carhops. There's no place to sit inside but all the ones I've seen have a patio set-up so you can eat outside. They also have great pineapple milkshakes.

Back in the motel, I turned the AC on high and sweated through the weather channel report. Bad news! The route home through Texas, New Mexico, etc. was experiencing records high temps in he 100s. No way was I going that way!
There were also tornados and thunderstorms passing through the midwest, but the northern states like South Dakota and Montana promised cool temps.

I had been watching gasbuddy.com whenever I had an internet connection and noticed the states in the middle of the country had the cheapest (relatively speaking, of course) gas.

My plan was to go north to the Washington coast to see my brother-in-law in Bellingham so I had to break my cardinal rule and backtrack a bit.
It looked like if I went north on I-29 to Sioux Falls then west on I-90, I would be able to dodge the tornados and hit some cooler air up there.
Remember, my van has no AC, which is no big thing out on the coast but I was to find out how much it was worth.

I awoke in the morning to find all the bug bites I had been accumulating in various campgrounds were itching like mad. On top of that, the temp was already higher than the hottest summer day in Bandon and the humidity was making me sweat even while I was in the shower.
I loaded up, turned on the 55X2 AC (Americanism for rolling down the windows) and headed back the way I had come.

Even with all the distractions, the drive along the back roads was great. The scenery in the woods and the small towns along the way was a knock-out.
I managed to navigate my way through Fort Smith this time without ending up in Oklahoma and got onto the Interstate heading north.

My original plan was to wander the back roads and get in some bike riding while using campsites as a base but that was all changed now. The "perfect storm" of rising gas prices, tornados and a seriously over-extended budget was coming together.

I had to make a run for home.

...more follows...