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We started early (6:30 am) toward Lind WA where we planned to camp that night. Soon we sensed that the air was smoky. Later we learned that there were wildfires south of us. Learned from the lesson of running out of water, we needed to carry more water. But we have limited bottle capacities. An idea came to me to carry cucumbers, which can be watery snacks.
We passed a small town Warden without stopping and and followed Lind-Warden Rd to Lind WA. Lind-Warden Rd was smooth with decent shoulders. But rubble strips made the rideable space narrower. We got to Lind earlier than expected because of tailwinds. I bought from the well-known Jim’s Market two fried burritos for lunch with other snacks. This Market makes arrangement for bikers to camp in the town.
Lind is a typical struggling small town with many establishments closed. I talked to the Mayor, Paula Bell. She invited me to the town hall, an office that looked like a small travel agency. She handed me two Adam County brochures, which included information of local towns and activities. Lind had two wells but only one was working at that time. The pump of the other well broke, had been fixed, and needed to be certified before it could pump again. That was the only water-related issue they were facing.
We decided to follow our contingency plan and continued to ride to Ralston and camp there. We got on the Lind-Ralston Rd, which was as smooth as Lind-Warden Rd but without rubble strips. There were hardly any traffic. Mistakenly we got off it to PTCT and paid a price. This portion of PTCT was very hard to ride because of the loose pebbles and stones. We could make only less than 5 mph. Eventually we got back to Lind-Ralston Rd. Along the sides of roads were fields of wheat, barley, corn, garlic, parsley, and others. As we approached Ralston the air quality had been improved.
Peter called and informed of our plan of camping at the Ralston city park to Randy, the ranger. When we got there we took a wrong turn. Randy was there waiting for us and saw two bikers moving away from the town and chased us down to instruct us to the right direction.
The camping site was nice, with multiple tables, a beautiful lawn, a pavilion and a swing chair. Across the street is a Grange Hall 934, with a full kitchen, toilets, and goodies (drinks in the fridge, energy bars, PTCT T-shirts, etc.), opened for us to use. We cooked our dinner in their kitchen.
One Ralston’s landmark was its elevator – a tall building to store and load grains to trains. We saw many of them along the way, some built of wooden and others concrete. They testament the past role of railroads in agriculture. These days, the elevators are replaced by metal ones and trains by semi-trucks.
Chidong Zhang's WA2MA Bike Trip 