With Katherine and I getting only a few hours of sleep the night before and John, Arne, Kelsey, and Wes getting in late the night before we ended up sleeping in til 8:30 or so. To our surprise Wes and Kelsey made a big breakfast of pancakes, oatmeal, and eggs, a great way to start the day. It wasn't until 11:40 that we left Wes and Kelsey's place, so we had to rush down to the ferry. We literally arrived at the ferry 2 minutes before it left, after biking a 7.6 miles in 38 minutes through the stop and go streets of Seattle. The ferry ride was short, but beautiful as we arrived at Bainbridge island around 1:00 pm.
The day was nice as the sun came out and we enjoyed a more relaxed pace with decent scenery. For lunch we stopped by the ocean at a spot with tons of blackberries.
After 10 minutes of eating blackberries we ate our packed lunches and continued onto the Olympic peninsula. A nice ride brought us to Sequim state park where we made some dinner and camped for the night. A 61 mile day with a late start and a ferry ride.
9/20
Not surprisingly, we all overslept a bit until 8:30, ate our peanut butter rich breakfast and were on our way. Four miles in we stopped at a bike shop followed by a grocery store. We got sucked into the grocery store and ended up eating a second breakfast of donuts, bananas, and chocolate milk. Finally we were on our way down a nice winding bike trail around noon. The pines, mountains, streams, and even some agriculture made for great scenery through the morning.
Wes' back tire was out of true so we stopped at another bike shop in Port Angeles. With the bike shop needing an hour we got some Chinese food for lunch and continued on. Unfortunately, we continued on in the wrong direction, and after some confusing directions which contained no road names from the locals we continued to get turned around for the next hour before finally getting back on the correct road. The road took us through lake crescent.
We all enjoyed the 10 mile ride alongside the lake. We also met up with another touring cyclist, Jordan from St. Petersburg, FL, who continued with us to our campground. With the delays of the day and stopping to enjoy the sites we stopped to camp at the end of Lake Crescent as the sun disappeared with only 58 miles behind us, 6 to 8 of which weren't even in the right direction. Dinner was nice as Wes brought out some smoked salmon and we all shared some laughs.
9/22
An interesting day to say the least. Since we were short on our mileage the previous two days and Wes needed to get within striking distance of Seattle for Kelsey to pick him up, we decided to launch early. We were on our bikes and moving by 7 a.m., our best start of the whole trip. About 15 miles in we stopped at the Hungry Bear Cafe for coffee and delicious breakfast sandwiches. By 10 a.m. we had made it 30 miles to Forks, the setting for the Twilight series - there were a number of stores wholly dedicated to memorabilia and local tours. After a long, difficult deliberation we decided against the Twilight tours.
In Forks Wes hopped a bus to get him a little bit closer to Aberdeen, his pickup destination. It was sad to say goodbye-it was awesome getting to spend some time with he and Kelsey.
After parting with Wes we posted up in the library and did some overall trip planning which ended up taking a few hours. After advice from a ranger and consideration of our mileage to get to San Fran, we hopped a bus ourselves and headed 20 miles to the coastline. We pedaled along the coast for just a few miles and had a late lunch at Kalaloch beach.
When it started to pour, we decided to set up shop in Kalaloch for the night at a really cool campground. As the rain pooled on or site we frantically moved our tents around to avoid sleeping in standing water. Our night consisted of standing and having a light dinner under the slight overhang at the bathrooms. Needless to say, we were all happy to get into our sleeping bags and call it a night by 9:45.
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Location:Olympic peninsula, WA
Isn't that area so pretty!! I loved traveling through there. Wish our times there had coincided with each other.
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