After a restless night wondering what the heck we had gotten ourselves into, we awoke at 4:30 AM to catch our 7:10 flight to Seattle. Our friend Steve Buchanan got us and our bikes to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight. We chose the early flight so we'd have enough time to get to Belfair that day and possibly Potlatch State Park if time permitted.
When we got to the baggage claim area at noon, Jim's bike was already waiting. Linda's was nowhere to be seen. We checked each flight that arrived after our's from Oakland, but Linda's bike didn't show up on any of those either. We were both very disappointed. At 2 PM we went and had lunch courtesy of Southwest while the Southwest baggage people searched the country for her bike. When we came back from lunch, the bike suddenly appeared. It had been in Seattle the entire time! How it got misplaced for 2.5-3 hours we'll never know.
It was about 3 PM when we started to put the bikes together. Everything went smoothly until the aerobar installation. It was very difficult on both bikes to get the clip-on bars tight enough and it took a lot of extra time. We finally rolled out of the airport at about 4:30 PM.
Less than a mile from the airport, Linda's right pedal came off the bike, still attached to her shoe. Jim reinstalled it, but it came loose again. This time Jim used a wrench to tighten the pedal, although normally handtight is sufficient. She didn't encounter any more problems with the pedal, although we were certainly paranoid about it for a while.
We got to the toll booth at the Fauntleroy ferry dock just in time to see the 5:30 ferry pulling away from the dock! The next ferry wouldn't arrive for another hour. We used this time to get our light attachments functional just in case they'd be needed. The sun was fairly low in the sky, but it was going down pretty slowly so we didn't have a good idea of how much light we had left. We asked several locals and got varying times of sunset.
We finally got across the Puget Sound at about 7:15-7:20 and started cycling immediately. We hoped to get to Belfair, but at this point we weren't really sure where we'd end up. In dimming light, we finally got to Highway 3 that led to Belfair. With 8 more miles to go, we decided to go for it. All of a sudden it got dark real fast. We put the lights on, but they didn't project ahead far enough for them to be of much use to us. We rode the last half hour in the dark through a forested highway until we finally reached Belfair at 9 PM. We decided not to go the Belfair campground because it was on another highway 3 miles outside of town. We were too scared and tired to keep riding into the unknown.
We were lucky that the Belfair Motel still had a room available for us. We were extremely hungry and didn't really have anything to eat with us, so we had to venture back out on the highway to a McDonald's we'd seen about a mile back.
When we finally got back to the motel room, we were freezing cold and very tired. We were concerned about Linda being so cold because of the chest/lung problems she had been experiencing the week before the trip. We took hot showers and went to bed around 10:30.
We left the motel at about 8:30 after eating some snacks we had in our bags for breakfast. The first order of the day was to fill our tires with air, but the only service station we saw charged for air so we skipped that. We did however find an Ace Hardware store where we were able to get some white gas for our MSR camp stove. They only had it in a gallon size container, so we filled our 2 fuel bottles with about 44 ounces of fuel and left the unused gas at the store. We suggested they save it for some other cyclists that may come in and need a small amount, but the clerk said someone in the store would probably take it home.
We then headed out for our first full day on the road. Less than an hour into the ride, we came upon a small town with a car repair shop. The owner was kind enough to let us fill our tires there and even did the filling himself.
All along the route, we kept passing
loads of wild blackberry bushes. Eventually, we found a good
place to take a break and spent 10-15 minutes picking and eating
fresh blackberries. They were sweet, juicy and delicious. That
picked our energy up pretty good until we could get to Shelton,
the Christmas Tree Capital of the World, where we were able to
get a mid-morning breakfast at a small grocery store. Linda was
really hungry by this point.
We did a fair amount of riding on U.S. 101 this day, and had to walk our bikes around a freeway re-paving crew at one point. They yelled at us to get off the semi-wet tar. We got to the town of Montesano after riding about 60 miles. Lake Sylvia State Park, just outside of Montesano, was one of our options for camping on this day. We were going to play it by ear on where to stay according to how we felt. After eating a lunch of turkey sandwiches and cookies in Montesano, we decided to continue on the additional 30 miles to Westport, where the Twin Harbors State Park is located. Jim adjusted his brakes, we filled the water bottles and were off. It was only about 3 o'clock when we left Montesano, so we had plenty of time.
For the next 15 miles, the uphills felt easier than the downhills because it seemed as if we were getting pushed up them. The downhills had a fierce headwind.
We arrived at Twin Harbors at about 6:30 PM, then went into town to find some groceries for the nights dinner. After looping around Westport, we ended up riding a total of 95 miles for the day! Jim asked Linda if she wanted to go ride another 5 miles to make it an even 100, but she declined.
The bike camp was in the woods with some mosquitoes. Jim put up the tent while Linda took a shower at 7:10 PM. While Jim was setting up camp, a Canadian cyclist stopped by to see if anybody was staying in the hiker/biker site. Apparently they had decided to get a regular campsite because there were no other cyclists there when they arrived. She seemed a little taken aback when we told her we had ridden 95 miles. Little did we know at that time that would not be last time we saw them.
After Jim took a shower, we cooked dinner in the little light that was left in the day and ate in the dark. Just after finishing dinner, we were visited by 3 racoons. We freaked out a little as they weren't scared of us. As Linda stood on the picnic table, Jim went to the ranger station to ask what to do with our food. The ranger said, "Just put it in your tent. They're friendly, but not THAT friendly."
We could hear it raining on the tent during the night and Linda woke often thinking about the clothes "drying" on her bike. It sounded as if it was still raining when we woke up in the morning. We were surpised to find our campsite nearly dry and blue skies overhead. The campsite was under such a thick canopy of trees that not a lot of water got through. The sounds we did hear were residual water dripping from the tree canopy. We were quite relieved that we wouldn't have to be starting out in rain that morning.
After the extremely long ride the previous day, our rear ends were pretty sore. We were also a little low on energy and what should have been a flat, easy ride seemed much more difficult. The last 10 miles were hills. Linda liked them a lot better because at least there was a reason for being tired.
The campground was a pleasant surprise. We had a beautiful view of the harbor behind our site where we watched the sunset. Also, we found some blackberries ripe for the picking. Linda called her Mom and Dad to let them know we were OK and on track. We met a guy from Germany at the small grocery store near the camp who was planning on riding to San Francisco in 9 days. He was going to be hurting.
At the campground we met a nice couple from Switzerland, Andrew and Simone, who had been bike touring for about a month of a planned 5-6 months. After the biking, they were planning to backpack throughout South America. They had both quit their jobs and decided to do some traveling while they were still young and didn't have a lot of possesions to worry about. They told us the story of one night at the beginning of their trip, when they ordered a large pizza for Andrew. Simone wasn't as hungry so she ordered a medium. Way too much food! They didn't know and no one told them.
We also met a guy from Rochester, NY who we referred to as "the Dorky Guy".
Today looked to be an interesting day with planned sidetrips to Ft. Canby in Washington and the Astoria Column in Astoria, Oregon. Also, we'd be crossing the 4.2 mile long Astoria Bridge over the Columbia River that separates the states of Washington and Oregon.
Jim tilted Linda's seat down this morning which made it more comfortable. We didn't start out until 9:30 again today. That seemed to be our normal departure time. It was taking us a long time to pack our stuff up and eat breakfast.
We felt much more recovered today and made pretty good time to Ft. Canby, our first side trip. The park was about 3 miles off the main route with a couple of long, steep hills thrown in. At Fort Canby, we went through a museum with an excellent presentation on the Lewis and Clark expedition. From the museum, we hiked about 10-15 minutes to a lighthouse. On the ride out of the park, we stopped at the North Point Lighthouse, the most photographed one in Washington.
Once we got back to the intersection with the main route, we stopped at a small cafe for a late lunch. We had the best fish and chips there that either of us has ever eaten. The fish was caught locally and the portions were huge.
On our way to Oregon, we went through our first tunnel of the trip. We set off a blinking light before entering the tunnel to warn motorists that cyclists were in the tunnel. The way the sounds echoed in there, we thought a massive logging truck was inches off our rear wheels. But we realized that there was no one behind us and it had just been the cars going in the opposite direction through the tunnel.
As we neared the state border, our speed picked up on a fast, flat section as the excitement of reaching our first major milestone rushed up on us. Because the Astoria Bridge is so long, it was not very relaxing riding across it. The shoulder was narrow and we had to use all of our concentration to hold a steady line. The first several miles of the bridge were flat, but near the end it got very steep over the portion of the bridge that was elevated to let ships pass under.
Once in
Astoria we decided to visit the Astoria Column, a sidetrip
recommended by the book we were using, "Bicycling The
Pacific Coast". The book said the road to the column was
steep, but that was a major understatement! Jim had to stand up
out of the saddle in his granny gear to make it up and Linda had
to walk it up part of the way. The climb to the column seemed
like it would never end as the road wound its way steeply up the
hill. Once there we were extremely disappointed to discover that
the column was covered with plastic and scaffolding while it was
undergoing repairs! At least we got a tremendous 360 degree view,
but we weren't sure the energy-draining climb was worth it.
Linda was really wiped out the last 10 miles to the campground from Astoria. She was cold after sweating on the uphill and then getting chilled on the descent. She also had lots of mosquito bites that were very itchy.
We didn't get in to Ft. Stevens State Park until 7:30. What had started out to be a 60 mile day had turned into a 75 mile day with the sidetrips. We decided that we needed to be very selective from now on about taking sidetrips because they could really add on the mileage. We liked to get into camp a lot earlier than 7:30 so that we could have time to relax, explore the camp, and eat before dark. Once we did get into camp, Jim discovered a broken spoke on his rear wheel, but decided to wait until morning to fix it. We ate a dinner in the dark consisting of bread, cheese, grapes and Coke/beer.
That night, we met Larry and Debbie, the Canadian couple we had seen several days before at Twin Harbors. We had a nice talk with them that evening and they told us about a place across the street from the park that was having a pancake breakfast in the morning. Pancakes sounded great at this point!