Coast to Coast!

We've hit the Pacific!! But... still another 400 miles to Portland. Yesterday, about mid-way through the day we decided that it would be foolish to stop just 15 miles short of the coast and get there mid-morning on Saturday. So we - much to Evies dismay I think - decided to go the extra 15-20 miles and hit the coast after a long day of riding. Well, not really too long, after all was said and done (including riding around town looking for food) we had 105 miles in on Friday. But we have reached one of our goals. We've rode from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It took us 72 days and roughly 4500 miles to do it.

So now its vacation mode, sort of. Our goal is to hit Portland by the 25th (our train leaves Sept 2nd) so that gives us 10 days to go about 400-450 miles. So if you consider about 50 miles of biking a day a vacation then thats what we have in front of us. I, Shawn, for one am looking forward to staying up later at nights and being able to sleep in a little longer, at least til 6:30-7. I'm sure that we'll have a couple days where we'll do 70-80 miles, especially if there really isn't anything special to see along our route. And then, on days like today, we'll only ride about 20 miles. Our agenda for today has been: sleep in til 7:30, ride into the town - Anacortes - hit the doughnut shop, do laundry (we've gone from washing our clothes in the sink to this option as of late), go to the library, take the ferry from Anacortes over to the San Juan islands and spend the rest of the day relaxing and taking in the sites over there. Yeah, it's a rough life.

As for the last couple of days. We were slightly disappointed with our first several days in Washington. It looked much more like Wyoming then we were expecting. Brown and barren as opposed to the green that we were expecting. We had 4 mountain passes to do in the state, the Cascade Mountains. We did two in one day, then decided to slow down a bit and just tackle one a day. The last pass, Washington Pass, was by far my favorite of the whole trip. Maybe it was because I knew it was our last but I enjoyed it, even the climb up it. Once we get to a library that actually lets us put pictures on I'll show the views from the top of that mountain, it was gorgeous. And from the peak down the scenery was the best we've had the whole trip. Snow-capped mountains overshadowing vivid blue lakes surrounded by evergreens. Roads that cut through almost jungle like environments. And tons of cyclists everywhere, which is always encouraging. The last 3 days have been amazing. And from what everyone tells us, the best is yet to come. So while we're all ready to be done with: the daily biking, taking down and putting up the tent, rolling up the sleeping bags and packing up camp, hoping that the campground that we hit that night will actually have a shower, etc. I think we're all excited about what lies ahead of us.

Well its off to enjoy the San Juan Islands! Til next time...