Two day ride with a new partner

I met Ty several weeks ago and we have been texting and planning on some kind of longer ride. He said he had always wanted to do a ride around and through Mt Ranier so earlier this week our schedules finally aligned and we went for it. Unfortuneately it was right at the start of a heat wave, but I figured it shouldn't be too bad as we would be at altitude much of the time. We met up at my house rather late because Ty lives over east of Portland and had a bit of a freeway ride to get here. Here we are ready to go and leaving:

I was leading the way and Ty asked me to stop when we had a good view of Mt St. Helens, so I did and got this pic of him taking a pic.

That got me to thinking maybe Ty had not been up to the Windy Ridge viewpoint, so when we got to the turn off I asked him if he wanted to take the 20 mile round trip to see it. He was game, and the road was pretty vacant and fun to ride. I took these pictures of Spirit Lake and the Toutle river canyon:

It seems to me that Spirit Lake has more water in it than it used to. I remember reading in the local news that there is a tunnel that was constructed after the blast to keep the lake at a certain level and that the tunnel was clogged and needed to be cleared out. Perhaps this is what is happening and why the lake appears to be higher.

The rest of the day was not so great as we got into a lot of traffic as we got further north around the east side of Mt Rainer. Worst part was 30 miles of fresh chip sealed two-lane road with piles of loose gravel in the center of the lane and between the lanes. Eventually we got to Enumclaw and after dinner at a Mexican resturant close to the motel we had a long chat session about our respective life and motorcycle experiences. When we went to get underway the next morning, Ty's bike came to a sudden halt. He had secured his bike overnight by putting a padlock through his chain and in the morning he forgot about it. We had a little delay while he took the cover off his front sprocket so he could get to the padlock.

Ty had planned to go down the west side of Ranier and then through the park back to where we had been the day before. I guess I sort of talked him out of it, though, when I said that since we were at the height of summer vacation we would probably find ourselves stuck behind motor homes going 35 miles and hour with no way to pass. So we kept going down hwy 7 to Morton and then back to Randal and the way we had come. By the time we got out of the mountains it was getting really hot, so when we stopped for a bite at the Eagle Cliffs store I got out my cooling vest and soaked it with water. This really helped on the rest of the ride home. It wasn't one of my best rides, but as the saying goes (sort of); "A bad day of riding is better than a good day at work".