Shrivelled Blackberries

As we left Newhalem on Friday clouds hung around the mountain peaks and dropped copious amounts of water on us. British weather in America. It was, thankfully, a little warmer than other days but we decided that it is time to head south for the winter. The ride was beautiful but wet as we headed away from the mountains and towards more built-up areas. We stopped in the town of Concrete (guess what they used to produce) for lunch and met a woman who had served us at a bakery in Twisp two days earlier. I think we're easy to spot in small towns. Sixty soggy miles took us to the relatively large town (10,000 people) of Sedro-Woolley, which had a city-run campground for us. There we met a man from Alaska who had cycled across the US 35 years ago. He was extremely generous and gave us some Alaskan beer and two pouches of Indian food for dinner. We drank the beer while watching TV in the tent. Luxurious.

The next day Mike got the first flat tire in approximately 1000 miles. The culprit was a very small strand of metal wire. He fixed it up at the side of the road and we continued on. A few miles later we saw the ocean for the first time in more than two months. Technically, it might have only been the Puget Sound but I'm counting it as the Pacific Ocean. We took a bike path over Fidalgo Bay into the town of Anacortes. This was the end of the second leg of the trip. The odometer read 7150 miles. Subtract 2970 miles for the first leg on the East Coast and we covered 4180 miles from the coast of Maine to the coast of Washington.

Our primary mission in Anacortes was to pick up the maps for the third and final leg of the tour. Thank you, Maxwell, for mailing those to us! There was a farmers' market happening in town so we stopped by to find some lunch. A man chatted with us about our trip as we walked up and recommended a pizza stand so that's where we ate. The pizza was great, we also swung by a stall selling baked goods for some dessert.

Then we began to head south! It took some mental adjustment after more than 4000 miles of westerly progress. Initially things did not go well as we tried to get clever with a shortcut only to be met with insurmountable concrete barriers. We backtracked and resumed our ride on Highway 20. It took us over Deception Pass with great views, alongside bays and beaches, and up a disappointingly large number of small hills.

We had talked about making it to Port Townsend for the night but knew that might be a stretch given that it was 65 miles for the day, we had to conduct some business at the post office, and Mike had a flat tire earlier. To cap it off, one of the ferries that crosses to Port Townsend had run aground a week earlier, leaving only one boat in service every 90 minutes, instead of a boat every 45 minutes. As we ate ice cream at a roadside farm stand we weighed up the minutes and miles remaining before the 6 pm ferry. Can we make that? Mike thought we could. The idea of waking up tomorrow with no more miles to ride was mightily appealing. We would have to cover 20 miles in less than two hours - sometimes that's doable, sometimes it's not. He got a second wind and led with a strong pace up the hill by the town of Coupeville. From the crest of the hill, with one mile remaining, we saw the ferry coming in. Time to go! We zoomed down the hill, bought tickets, and got to the front of the queue just as the ferry docked. Woohoo! The ferry dropped us off in downtown Port Townsend and the final three miles took us to the Fort Worden state park where we camped.

We're planning to stay here for a few days for a vacation from our vacation. Today we had our first rest day and did very little. We made hot drinks and went for a walk on the beach and explored the park, which used to be a military installation in the first half of the 20th century. Like fancy people we ate brunch at the park's cafe, then we lowered the tone of the trip back to its normal level by taking a shortcut down an extremely muddy and overgrown slope back to the campsite. We slid on our behinds. Consequently, we need to do laundry now. That will be done tomorrow! Until then.

Misty mountains near Newhalem

It's blackberry season

These berries are not good

Baby goats are fun

These goats came over to say hello

Contemplating the bike path into Anacortes

Deception Pass

Looking out from Deception Pass