My husband and I went and stayed in Packwood, WA for the weekend. The great thing about that location is that if you head south, you're biking on Mt St Helens, and if you head north, you're biking on Mt Rainier. In other words, there's a ton of incredible riding there!

On Saturday, we biked up to Windy Ridge on Mt St Helens--it was a really challenging ride. Different than a lot of mountain rides I've done in which you go up constantly, then come back down, this ride had a lot of up and down, with constantly changing gradients, some of them quite challenging. The scenery was gorgeous throughout--particularly amazing was a moment when you came around a bend in the road, and were suddenly in the blast zone from the 1980 eruption. There were a few dead trees standing, cut off at half-height or so, and then a carpet of fallen trees, all oriented the same direction. It was a very humbling view.

We meant to ride on Mt Rainier on Sunday, but my husband had some work stuff come up, so we came home and I did some painful-but-productive hill repeats by our house. We're hoping to head back next weekend, to repeat the Windy Ridge ride and also get our Mt Rainier ride in. I'll get a couple good rides in this week, then do that trip on the weekend, and then I will be doing nothing more strenuous than grocery store runs (14 flat blocks round trip...) for a few days. Hopefully the challenging rides, plus the several days of rest will leave me peppy and strong as I return to the Italian Dolomites to give summer a last hurrah--I'm simultaneously excited and wondering why I'm crazy enough to be doing this again, when I know for sure this time how hard it's going to be!