Golden wheat fields ready for harvest completely enveloped us this morning as we climbed out of Waitsburge on our way into Walla Walla. We camped out at the fairgrounds in town last night, our best camp by far. The best places to camp are city parks and fairgrounds. These places are usually within walking distance to the city pool and there are no triple stacked commercial campsites overstuffed with as many tents, pickups, boats, jet skis, and cigarette smoking, beer drinkin’, horseshoe pitchin’ people that you can get onto one 10’x10’ square of grass.

The road was very quiet this morning, with only one car, a truck actually, and a combine sharing the road with us for the first 25 miles. We rolled 68.5 miles today to Hat Rock (named by Clark for it’s resemblance to a derby) State Park. Our 6:30 am start saved both time in the heat (97 degrees today) and some time fighting headwinds. We crested over into the Columbia Gorge via the Wallula Gap for a spectacular ride into Oregon.