Originally Posted by
Catgrrl70
I concur. Winthrop doesn't strike me as being scary in any way - it's a huge tourist draw (I am found there at least one time per year) and lots of cyclists and motorcyclists visit it. I've never been treated anything but nice there. Maybe it's the tourists driving the unfamiliar roads that are the issue? I do believe however, that some of the other smaller farming towns may not be so "accomodating" to cyclists...but not Winthrop.
Maybe it's because my experience with Winthrop is from manning the overnight on last summer's 600k for the randos, and when the sun went down the drunk locals came out; and apparently harrasing cyclists is a team sport up there because between the same 3 carloads of yahoos we had a 2 x 3 foot A-frame sign for the controls stolen and thrown into a river, 2 blinkie lights stolen off another control sign (which they backed over after stealing the lights,) and a truckload of idjits follow a group of riders right into the control stop threatening them the entire time (until me and 3 other control workers who brought our dogs chased them off with threats of our own.)
I won't be riding there any time soon; but west of the mountains on SR-20 is just fine from Marblemount all the way to Anacortes.