Day 3: Hat Rock Campground to Hell's Gate State Park (Lewiston)

This day was a very serious day on the total schedule. We had to take three serious climbs. Fortunately the gradient was not that big in the beginning of each climb but each end just before the top was quite steep.
I am driving together with Maarten Heckman, my cycling buddy that I have trained with for quite some time. We have the same pace and next to that its nice to have company and to help eachother when something might go wrong. Since this day was expected to be very long and serious we left really early (around 6.00 am). We arrived at the campground at 6.15 pm so not bad at all. The latest participant on this day came in at the campground at only 10.15 pm so it was a real serious physical effort.
Temperatures were extremely high again and in this area there is no shade anywhere. Next to that its pretty deserted so we had to plan ahead for water and food often. But we made it, our support people (Maarten's wife Winda and my father Jacques) help us very good. They put up tents, cook, buy groceries and so on. Most of the riders need to do that themselves. After a day of more then 12 hours of cycling that can be pretty tiring. On this day we rode 240 Kilometer (150 miles) again, we climbed in total 4500 feet.