Two wheels. Four mountains. Eight days. A million memories.

We start on Saturday morning with a complimentary ride in our van from Seattle over the Cascade Mountains. We start cycling on the eastern slope of the Cascades, following country roads through the woods to Cle Elum, where we spend the night at the Iron Horse Inn, a bed and breakfast with an outdoor hot tub and rooms filled with railroad memorabilia. The inn is adjacent to a major rails-to-trails bicycle path that crosses Washington and is near a former railroad station/roundhouse recently converted into a railroad museum.

On Sunday we cycle out of the forested hills and down into the open cattle country near Ellensburg. We ride beside the Yakima River as it exits the Cascades and cuts through a beautiful, winding canyon before depositing us into the apple orchards around Yakima. We spend the night at the Birchfield Manor, a luxurious inn with award-winning meals.

Monday we follow the Naches River, gently ascending the wooded eastern slope of the Cascades. We spend the night at Whistlin’ Jack Lodge in the Wenatchee National Forest, where you can enjoy the river views from your room’s bay window or from the outdoor hot tub.

Most of the cycling on Tuesday is within Mt. Rainier National Park. We climb 30 miles to Chinook Pass and are rewarded with a 12-mile downhill through Cayuse Pass (yes, down to a pass) and along the Ohanapecosh River. Then it’s back to climbing again — 24 miles on a spectacular road up the eastern flank of Mt. Rainier. This is a challenging but very rewarding day, as we work our way up the mountain through virgin evergreen forests, past waterfalls from streams filled with snowmelt, and along a road with little traffic, as most vehicles approach the mountain from the west.

We spend two nights at Paradise Lodge, a national park lodge located in the middle of the park (at 5,200 feet) on Mt. Rainier. The classic lodge has been beautifully redone over the last two years. On Wednesday, we’ll hike one of our favorite trails through meadows of wildflowers, beside sparkling streams, and up to an area with commanding views stretching for more than 100 miles. For those who prefer to ride, we’ll head down to the mineral hot springs of Longmire, then back up again to Paradise.

Thursday we cycle along a little-used country road beside a river toward Mt. St. Helens. We approach the volcano from the northeast, cycling straight into the route that the exploding gases and ash took during the eruption of May 18, 1980. At first the evergreen forest looks normal, but then we notice pebbles of white pumice on the forest floor. Going further, we see that some trees have lost branches. Then standing dead trees appear, then trees that were knocked down by the blast. They lie like spilled toothpicks on the hillside, their trunks all neatly pointing to the still smoldering crater.

Devastation seems complete until we crest a ridge and view the ultimate — no trees. Here the hot volcanic gases blasting at over 500 miles per hour not only knocked everything down, but literally blew it all away. From a vista overlooking log-filled Spirit Lake, a park ranger tells us the incredible story of the explosion, the current buildup of a cinder cone in the volcano’s crater, the dramatic increase in volcanic activity since September 2004, the amazing reemergence of life in the 1980 blast zone, and the possibility of a future eruption. Awesome!

From Mt. St. Helens we van to the Columbia River and the elegant Skamania Lodge – a full service resort where we spend the night.

Friday’s ride is through the apple and pear orchards of the Hood River Valley. Later we pass through thick forests of tall firs as we wind around Mt. Hood and finish the day with a climb to award-winning Timberline Lodge, where we spend the night. Here we enjoy a superb meal in a spectacular setting: at an elevation of 6,000 feet, the views are majestic.

On Saturday we enjoy a long downhill from Mt. Hood, followed by a beautiful ride on winding roads beside a river and through a wooded canyon that takes us to the outskirts of Portland. Our remarkable journey concludes with a short shuttle to the Portland airport, airport hotels, and downtown Portland hotels.