War Games
A deer blends in to the hillside along the Columbia River - Near Beverly, Washington
The day hadn’t even started and already it was not going to plan. We originally were going to finish the day at our long term goal of the Columbia River. However, the bridge crossing at the Sentinel Gap had been closed for many years and the rehab work to complete it was supposed to have finished around August of 2021. Sadly, there had been an accident during the late phases of construction that had pushed the project back indefinitely and though it was 2 and half months later, there was still no official date that the bridge would reopen. Because of this, we would have to have to stop some 2 miles short of our goal of crossing the Columbia River. Secretly, my legs were happy as we’d already had a 25 mile day planned with over 1,500 feet of climbing, but it was unfortunate as this would keep me from making good on this promise to Captain Fantastic and I had no idea when or if I’d ever be able to. Even so, we still made sure to get an early start and knock out our miles before the sun got too intense because even though it was mid October, it could still get pretty toasty along the Palouse to Cascades Trail in central Washington.
We had been doing the majority of this trip in a west to east orientation first and then riding back to the car from east to west, but today would be the opposite as the section across the Yakima Training Range was so long, difficult, and remote, there was no way to start in the middle. This actually worked out well though as it meant that we’d start with the big climb and the second half of the day would be all downhill. For continuity sake, I’ll gloss over the climb and restart our tale where we had last turned around near the toilet in the middle of nowhere, where our water and Powerade had been cached. As for the climb, it was actually a little easier than expected as the trail was more compact than it had been on the western side of the Yakima Training Center, but it was by no means easy. It was long, dry, and devoid of water (as expected) making our planned water cache that much more important to our days success.
(click photos to enlarge and see descriptions)
As we approached the water cache, the sun was climbing towards it’s zenith and the temperatures were rising. The few clouds in the sky were burning off but I wasn’t too concerned as the water cache was at the high point for the day and the rest of the ride would be gravity assisted as we coasted down the 1,500 climb towards the Columbia River. When I went to retrieve the gallon of water and Powerade, I was shocked by how much the plastic had degraded over the last few days. As I picked the gallon up, my hand was damp. Initially, I assumed it was dew, but then I realized, we were in the desert and there isn’t a whole lot of dew in the desert. That could mean only one thing, the gallon had a leak… Normally, I would have been pretty worried about this, but I had tried to plan for the worst so had packed more liquids than I had ever carried before. Including the cache supply, we had 2 mostly full gallons of water, 5 additional 32 oz bottles, the dogs’ water bowl, and 3 32 oz Powerades. And now that everything was downhill, this should be more than enough. Though granted, we had gone through about 1 gallon of our 3 gallons of liquid on the climb up, but still, we were way ahead of the game. The temperatures also seemed to be slightly cooler than had been forecast which made our water situation less worrisome. Though one of the symptoms of Dogzilla’s Cushing’s Disease diagnosis is that he sometimes drinks excessively, so I had to make sure to earmark one of the bottles on my bike as an emergency bottle just for him as he would the one most sensitive to a water emergency.
I refilled as many of the empty bottles as I could from the leaking jug before it was all lost, then we took a short break in the shade where the dogs ate some Greenies and salami and shared in my block of cheddar cheese; then we began the slow roll through the deserted base. And by deserted, I mean completely empty. Over the 25 miles we rode for the day, we didn’t find another person on the trail. It was so empty that when the wind would stop blowing, we could stop riding and hear nothing except for one another breathing. While we rode along, marveling at the solitude and silence, I was instantly jarred back into the present moment by the sound of a huge explosion! Thankfully, it wasn’t too close, but it was close enough scare the crap out of me for a moment before remembering that the Yakima Training Center is an active Army base and the military uses it to practice fighting wars. This was followed by several more explosions and artillery fire. It sounded like we were in a battle scene from a war movie. Over the next 2 hours or so, we heard well over 100 different explosions.
Since it was obvious that the military was out doing maneuvers, I thought it was possible that we might run into some soldiers and that I’d have to explain to them what I was doing out here with the dogs. It wasn’t illegal for us to be on the trail, but based on the remoteness and condition of the trail, I’m going to guess that not many dogs come through in bike trailers so I thought I’d try to make our presence a little more official sounding by referring to the dogs as the Ferocious Animal Retaliation Tandem or FART squad since we know the military loves jargon and acronyms. I started to hope that we got to talk to some soldiers just to see if I could make them laugh.
That said, the day wasn’t endless explosions, so there was time to ponder and reflect. Foremost on my mind wat that it was the 1 year anniversary of Captain falling into a coma after her kidney and adrenal gland removal. The vet had told me that she was not going to wake up and that I needed to put her down, and I almost had. Having her out here with me, one year later, was nothing short of a miracle and I made sure to cherish each moment that we had as they were truly a bonus that I will be forever grateful for.
Our progress was slowed by the numerous rock cuts through the rolling hills. It wasn’t that the trail itself was bad, in fact it was fairly firm, it was the fact that the walls of the cuts were somewhat unstable and there was large amounts of rockfall scattered across the trail making it a veritable minefield that had to be slowly traversed in an endless zigzag of unnatural movements. It would have been tough enough with just 2 wheels in a straight line, but with 4 offset wheels to contend with, I wound up pushing the bike quite a bit even though we were going downhill. At times, I would even have to clear some of the rocks off the trail to make a usable path for us to follow.
While clearing some of these rocks from a rock cut, I heard a loud rumble and looked up just in time to see an enormous military vehicle of some sort fly across the trail about 100 yards in front of me at the end of the cut. It was going so fast that there was no way it had bothered to stop and look to see if any pedestrians had been on the trail. If I hadn’t stopped to clear the rocks, we would have been crushed. It made me extra diligent to slow down at any military roads that were crossing the trail to make sure that we didn’t get flattened. It was also the first sign of the military other than the ongoing explosions and mortar fire.
A mile or so later, far off in the distance, we could see dozens of military vehicles of all shapes and sizes doing some sort of maneuvers. I took a couple photos before getting paranoid that I might be violating some sort of law by taking pictures on a military base. The trail slowly wound closer and closer to the convoy, close enough that I could make out that some of the vehicles at markings on them indicating that a few of the vehicles were medical vehicles. We eventually got close enough that we caught the eye of some of the soldiers. I would wave when it was obvious that they were looking at us, but most of them ignored me as only one waved back. I would have loved to have taken some photos of the vehicles up close, but again I was worried about breaking some sort of law. As we kept riding, I decided that since there were no “no photography” signs posted anywhere, I was probably ok, but by that time, we had passed all of the vehicles; though I did find one group of soldiers practicing setting booby traps, so that was interesting to watch as we slowly passed.
Shortly after passing the convoy and soldiers practicing setting traps, we came upon the former train stop of Doris. Nothing of the stop itself is left, but there are now several buildings that appear to be for military use along with another pit toilet for public use. There were also a large number of porta potties being used by a squadron of soldiers. As a soldier went in to use the facilities, the rest of the squad stood guard around it. It was quite comical to see but I didn’t take any pictures as it felt weird to basically be taking a picture of heavily armed people in the process of going to the bathroom.
We coasted on and were soon treated to our first views of the Columbia River near the Wanapum Dam. This meant we had just a few miles to go before our day was over. We then caught a glimpse of Beverly Bridge in the distance, our original goal for the day. We wouldn’t be crossing though because of the closure, but it was great to see that we were so close to our goal. Pedals cranking, I pushed as hard as I could to get to the car as I was enjoying the speed from our long, downhill slalom. As we got to the final gate next to the car, off to our side we heard a first, a barrage of machine gun fire! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to be officially off the base at this point!
As I started loading the dogs, bike, and bike trailer into the car, I noticed that the leaky gallon of water was empty. I then picked up my second gallon and to my amazement, it too had sprung a leak and we were completely out of our extra water! Since we were at the car though, we didn’t have anything to worry about, we had dodged a bullet, both figuratively and literally.
