Last two days/settling in

Before too much time goes by I figured I should jot some notes about the last couple days of the trip for posterity. Sunday, we biked from Sedro Wooley past Anacortes, over deception pass to Whidbey Island, and then took the ferry to Port Townsend. While we didn’t get rained on, the skies were overcast, traffic was heavy (we saw more cars than we did in all of North Dakota), and most of the roads were kind of tree tunnels, so we took few pictures. After Washington pass, the riding was a bit… anticlimactic? There were still hills to climb and miles to cover, but I think we were both ready to be done.

Sunday night we spent at Fort Worden State Park, where there was an unexpected fiddling conference taking place. All the campsites were reserved (including the hiker biker sites which are normally not able to be reserved) but a friendly fiddler let us pitch our tent in the corner of his site. Monday, we biked down the peninsula to Bainbridge, getting lost for the first time since Ohio. I misread a sign and asked Susan if we were supposed to turn; she heard my question as a direction, and I took her making the turn as confirmation that my misreading was correct. A few miles later we were extremely confused to be right back where we had been earlier in the day… the wrong turn had lead us in a long circle, which was fortunate as we might have wound up much farther off route otherwise. I think the whole thing only took us about 8 extra miles but again it seemed like a good indicator that we were ready to be done.

The ferry from Bainbridge took us right into downtown Seattle, where we were immediately overwhelmed by the hordes of tourists. Like cars the day before, we quickly saw way more people than we’d seen cumulatively since leaving Minneapolis. And of course, downtown Seattle being the special place that it is we saw many more special people than we’d seen since, well, probably the last time we were in Seattle.

Today we’ve been working on cleaning our panniers, shopping for groceries, and not eating too much. Still to come: some more pictures, further reflection from Susan, and an excruciatingly detailed breakdown of our gear, what worked well, what didn’t, and what we’d do differently next time.