TeamD Adventures

The No Alibi Rally is June 4-5 and it is looking mighty good.

Last weekend Marvin and I measured the route, which begins and ends in Moses Lake and overnights in Lewiston. Our cunning plan was to leave on Friday at noon for the start at Moses Lake, run the event as far as Dayton, spend the night there and then measure the rest of the route on Saturday and be home that night in order to not completely use up the weekend.

Things were going great all day Friday, a timely departure, working hard, and placing checkpoints with the usual No Alibi flair. We stopped in Waitsburg at the Whoopemup Hollow Cafe for a most excellent meal. The Jambalaya was amazing and the locally brewed IPA wasn’t at all bad. Recommended.

Then we made our way to Dayton where things went a slightly askew. I won’t say much about the Dayton Motel other than if you find yourself in that part of the world searching for somewhere to spend the night, it is really worth your time to press on to Lewiston/Clarkston or some other place. Along with the shabby motel room it rained all night long.

Saturday morning had us at the Home Baked Goodness restaurant for a delightful morning repast. Also recommended, though probably not speedy enough to handle the No Alibi crowd when they come through town during the rally.

Marking CPs and noting GPS coordinates makes for a not-so-fast journey along the rally route, forcing us to enjoy the view, albeit a bit muted with the gray skies. As we traveled into the Marengo wind facility, we were able to traverse a section that had been blocked by a snowbank just a few weeks prior. It’s onone of my favorite roads but alas, the lack of gravel on the road surface had us slipping and sliding and getting concerned about measurement accuracy. Then we came to an uphill section, and despite a limited slip differential and gravel tires, there was just no way we could proceed through the rest of the regularity and had to turn around, with Marvin providing a boost to the front of the car to get us turned around. It was VERY slippery stuff; I’ve been on ice with more traction than that mud.

Fortunately we were able to map out and measure a new section to bypass the unusable road. We proceeded to Clarkston where we evaluated a possible venue for the Saturday dinner and then decided to go with the hotel as a banquet facility. With the re-route and running around Lewiston to find a place to print out more of the route we were behind schedule and knew we’d be finishing the long day in darkness.

After getting back to Ritzville and Moses Lake, setting checkpoint stakes by flashlight, we were able to change back to street tires and proceeded home over the pass. The I-90 transit home is usually not my favorite drive due to the inordinate amount of crappy drivers and left lane bandits that appear in the Ellensburg vicinity, but midnight on a Saturday makes for a much quieter drive. Our cold May trip was punctuated with light snow over Snoqualmie pass — let’s hope for better weather in early June!