Day 71, July 28th 2008, beginning in Lynnwood, Washington

Paul got up before me today, and was rearing to go. I was working for a bit and told him how I was in no rush, so after showering and getting ready for the day he went back to sleep in the bed. After finishing up another blog, I went upstairs to the lovely sight of Kyle making breakfast for us again. He had under promised and over delivered since he had now made breakfast for us both mornings we were there.

He had already had some made, so I dug in while Paul and Allison still slept. He had sliced up some apples and had some really good Guava juice as well. A truly dynamite breakfast. After I had eaten my share and Kyle had some he went to get Allison and I woke up Paul. This is when I discovered that he was fully dressed in his riding shorts and jersey asleep in bed. It was hilarious, and I wish I were equipped with the camera as it would have been a priceless shot.

Once Paul ate we packed up our things and headed out. The Hutchisons were going to go to the beach for the day, so they got prepared as well. When we were set to go, Terra was unfortunately not feeling good, so we took the departure picture with Kyle and Allison and headed for Whidbey Island.

We started on this bike trail Kyle pointed out to us which was really nice riding. Soon enough, we lost the trail and just rode the roads which also had bike lanes on them. We passed the Boeing building, although I'm not sure it was the really big one as it didn't seem that huge. As we entered Mukilteo, we were at a fairly high elevation and as Kyle told us it was downhill all the way to the bay where the ferry was. When we rolled over the hill it was a beautiful view down into the bay from above. Water again.

We boarded the ferry with fairly good timing, although it came every half hour so it was hard to be off. We rolled onto it first on the bikes followed by a bunch of cars. It was a nice quick ferry ride, but it was cool for the time being to be on a boat.

In no time we were on the other side and away we went, before all of the cars. Whidbey Island is quite hilly, and we were going up and down for most of it. Much of our ride was inland, so we didn't see a lot of water as we were riding, but the few shots were nice.

We pulled into a small shop in the town of Greenbank, and had our lunch there. Kyle had packed us each some fish, chips, and a snack pack. Awesome. Paul thought the fish might have upset his stomach the night before so I saved his fish to eat later. I pulled out the ferry schedule to check when the next ferry off the island to Port Townsend was, and realized we had under an hour to go another ten miles.

We weren't sure of the terrain, so we rushed out of there at about 2:10. We pedaled fiercely for a while, and we made it to the port in plenty of time as the topography was agreeable. It was a bit longer of a ferry this time back to the mainland, and we enjoyed the view as the bay side of Port Townsend is beautiful from the boat.

Once on the island we decided to check out Port Townsend as you have to backtrack a bit from the ferry to do so. It was a very cool, small town that had lots of little shops and people everywhere. We ended up going to an ice cream shop that had wifi. We got some ice cream and also figured out that we would take an amtrak bus from Astoria, our first stop in Oregon, to Portland, where Meghan was flying into.

We got back on the bikes and after about 10 miles we got on the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway… the 101. We would be riding this road primarily for most of the rest of our trip. It is supposed to be the best ride in the states; we'd have to see.

After a while on the 101, we stopped in a small town called Quilcene, which seemed to have a school and one shop, a general store. We got some chocolate milk, and I made peanut butter sandwich from my leftovers… the bare essentials.

Once we filled up, we would make one more push before bed. It brought us many lovely hills, and we realized that although we weren't quite on the coast yet, we probably didn't have as flat a journey ahead of us as we originally thought. Either way, we wanted to cover a bit more ground, so we passed up two campsites and made it to the one we had picked out earlier that was farther away.

The campground was a tiny state park. There was enough light left, so I attempted to inflate the soccer ball to no avail. Turns out the $10 Nike pump was no good. I knew it was a ripoff when I bought it, but there were no other options. Resourceful-like, I took the needle out and held it tightly up against the head of the bike pump that we used for our tires. I was able to get plenty of air in it that way, and we were all set. By the time I figured this all out however, it was dark. So the ball sat inflated by the wayside all night. Poor guy.

Instead after setting up the tent, a fire was the next priority. Paul and I got a small thing going and I scrounged around for more wood. I was able to bust up a good sized log with a big rock in no time, and we had a blaze going. It was nice. We enjoyed that for a while, but unfortunately had no s'mores ingredients, so it eventually lost its luster. With the help of my bladder, I put the fire out and we went to bed. We would have one more night in Washington, and then Oregon would have to prepare for two studly bikers to coming rolling in. Hopefully two days was enough time. Meghan was also coming in three days; I was very excited since I hadn't seen her in 73 days.

Life was good.