Five year anniversary and 8000 cycling miles together

And what a perfect ride for it.  The Inland Empire in Richland, WA.  This is our fourth time doing this ride.

We like it so much because of two features:  Weber Canyon and Horse Heaven Hills.

The ride starts in Richland and travels along a nice highway to Benton City. At Benton City one begins a 7-mile ascent up Weber Canyon.  It isn't particularly steep, but it is a steady climb, and a beautiful one.

Then one has about a 7-mile ride along a high mesa above the Columbia River (Horse Heaven Hills, we believe it is called).

Then the ride descends into Prosser, takes the old Inland Empire Highway back to Benton City, and then goes back to Richland.

The ride is about 73 miles, but we didn't want to do that many miles because wind was predicted.

What we did was reasoned that since the two best parts are in the first 25 miles, why not do that part twice?  So we did the ride as an out and back.  Got to go up Weber Canyon and down it.  Go along the upper mesa Horse Heaven Hills, and then back to see it from a completely different direction. 

It was wonderful, and a perfect-for-us at our stage of training this time of year of 50 miles and 2000 feet of elevation gain.

Here we are at the top of Weber Canyon:

where we ran into Jules and Dale:

What was special was that during our ascent up Weber Canyon we passed our 8000 mile mark of riding together, starting from when we first got to know each other.  This is equivalent to riding from Whidbey Island to Key West, Florida, and back, and then getting to Rock Springs, Wyoming (ever heard of it?) on another loop.

Here is part of the ride down Weber Canyon, taken with my nifty new Fly6 Camera:

And a short clip of us at the top of the canyon, riding along Horse Heaven Hills:

Here is a shot from my Fly6 of Vicky.  Isn't she great?

This week begins our fifth anniversary of getting to know each other.  On this day, five years ago, I asked Vicky if she'd like to be my dance partner and practice dancing together (clever fellow that I am—I mean, what woman is going to say no to that?).  Five days later was our first, and only, date.  And we were in love. A week later we were engaged.  More on that later…

And now we are on top of Weber Canyon on our 8,000th mile of cycling together!

Today's ride marked some important events in our lives, and what a beautiful ride to do that on.