STP Bike Race

STP (Seattle To Portland) bike race is today and tomorrow.  I can't remember the exact mileage, but I believe it is around 200 miles.  Some of the riders do it all in one day, others take two days.  Since part of the route runs through Yelm, and I had to drive through Yelm to get to my agility class this AM, I spent quite some time last night attempting to locate information that would assist me in deciding if I needed to find some other way of driving, since I didn't have many options.  I wasn't very successful in locating anything helpful, so I ended up leaving home about 15 minutes earlier than I would normally (I intended to leave 30 minutes early, but couldn't quite manage to get organized enough to do so!)
As I approached Yelm I could see that signs were being erected and although I did see a few bikers along my route, I wasn't impacted by them at all.
I wasn't terribly worried about my drive home, since their route was going south, and I was going north.  As I approached the first stop light in Yelm, I could see a LOT of bikes heading toward me.  Several hundred.  Normally I would drive along highway 507 a few miles north of Yelm to a city called McKenna, make a right, then continue on a number of miles to Hwy 7 and home.  The race route followed 507 south from the "Roy Y" and had come down Hwy 7 prior to that, several miles north of my turn off of Hwy 7.  So, I decided to stay on 507 from Yelm all the way north to the "Y", a distance of around 15 miles, cutting across JBLM land.  I was amazed at the number of riders I had seen so far, and wanted to see some more!
McKenna has a school sitting right on the highway, and STP riders had a "pit stop" there.  I couldn't believe the number of riders taking a break.  HUNDREDS of them.  I continued northward to Roy (a distance of maybe 4-5 miles?) where there was another pit stop, with yet hundreds more riders resting!  All along the 15 mile route I drove past THOUSANDS of riders.....what an amazing sight.  I know they limit the entrants to 10,000 riders, and I must have seen around 1/2 half of those on my ride home...whew.....simply amazing.
What a perfectly grand day for a bike ride.....sunny and cool.....maybe a bit breezy...hopefully they had the wind at their backs, and not having it facing them the entire route!
I believe I read on their website that this was the 24th year?  And there are two guys who have ridden in all of them....