We awoke to the sound of sprinklers at 7am. They had the lawn pretty much covered so I just managed to close my tent door before too much rain got in! Then we had to play dodge the sprinklers whilst we unloaded our tents and took them down and moved them to another lawn with no sprinklers to dry off.

After breakfast we headed to the IGA for some lunch and water.

We head on past the post office where I bought some stamps and sent a few bits home that I no longer wanted to carry around. A t-shirt and shorts and some leaflets.

As we left the post office a man came up to us and asked us if we preferred roller top panniers or flip over panniers we have both. In the end we decided that flip over were better and easier to use etc.

He told us a bit about his bike touring etc and about a band that tour on bikes and have the audience peddle them to generate the power. They were called the Ginger Ninjas. He also offered and gave us some useful advice about Cliffs camera lens and possible solutions to getting a new one.

After this we headed of fairly late the climb started pretty much straight away. The rain a little later.

We carried on to Wauconda where we had lunch in a general store and had a good chat with a group of 5 recumbent cyclists. They were very friendly and were riding park of the northern tier route. Hopefully we will be able to stay with them later on in the trip, as they possible live on the route we going to take.

After this and drinking a lot of bottomless coffee we headed out into the rain up to the peak and then down into republic by this time it was pretty rainy so the decent was not that fast, but it was still fun. We stopped a lot for the loo due to all the coffee.

In Republic we found our warmshowers hosts house and had a shower a lovely dinner and learnt a lot about gold mining that still happens in the area and also generally a bit more about the general area.

Its raining outside still its nice to be indoors.

Today despite the rain was a good day we met a lot of lovely friendly people who I don’t think we would have ever met if we were not travelling by bike. I think there is something about a bike with loads of stuff on it that makes people want to talk to you.

Sorry the pictures today aren’t to good it was raining so I didn’t get my camera out much.