May 28, Saturday to Rockport, Washington

 We were impressed with the "limited" continental breakfast at Cocusa motel in Burlington Washington where we stayed Friday night. We got a little bit earlier start and we're able to take routes that were close to but off from 20 for quite a while. This made for fairly quiet roads. 
   If you look closely at the picture you'll see the "sale today" sign and the sign by the road even says "flea market." We were looking for something like this because our warm showers hosts said we'd have cold weather in the mountains and said be sure you have plenty of warm clothing.   So we bought some used clothes for a donation to the senior center holding the sale to help keep us warm: some thicker socks & mittens ,thicker hat and an extra jacket layer for each of us. 
   It was fun to experience the valley getting smaller and the mountains getting closer as we worked our way up the Skagit Valley.  The river is wide and powerful  and at one point saw a tremendous pile of large tree trunks thrown up in a heap next to us on the road even though the river was well below us. We could also see some mountains that had a tremendous amount of snow on their tops.  Had an enjoyable walk in an old growth forest with Douglas fir and cedar.   Moss thickly coated tree branches and reminded us of what we saw on top of the mountain in the Solomon Islands. Reminded us we were in temperate rainforest country. 
Below is our ride for the day.
 https://ridewithgps.com/trips/91552325

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sep 21. Heading Home, Part 3

Image
  As predicted, we didn't get any rain last night and because of a little bit longer day, we got started a little sooner.                    Packing Up at Fort Custer  We had beautiful roads lined with hickory, maple, oak and walnut trees especially during the first part of our ride, which sometimes led to a challenge dodging all the nuts and acorns on the side of the road.  We had a bit more traffic today than many other days even though we tried to choose quieter roads.  We also had a moderate head wind so that slowed us down a bit.   Wouldn't you know it--we had a flat tire less than 10 miles from home!  We still arrived well before sunset. 
Read more

Dreams and preparation

Image
Traverse City July 2021.  Ride around northern half of  Lake Michigan. We  have dreamed about crossing the  country on bikes for many years.   Work, parenting and other things has prevented us from this  adventure.  This  year we are  working toward making it a  reality.  We have  gotten work figured out that we can be away for  a  number of months.   We now have our tickets purchased for the train ride to Seattle, some new gadgets purchased and multiple hours spent looking at routes.  
Read more

June 21 Tuesday Miles City to Glendive, MT

Image
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/94180454 Today after a breakfast with food that we got at Walmart last night, we got an early start as had a bit longer distance to Glendive. It was cool and cloudy so, although we started off wearing shorts, we had a lot more clothes on top plus gloves. Today was another day of following the Yellowstone River Valley. We headed out on the old road leading out of Miles City which was very smooth and straight and low traffic and even had a mild tailwind. The first sunlight we saw was lighting up some of the hills on the other side of the valley, while we were under a cloud cover. Farms along the road did a lot of irrigation. Saw a number of historical plaques talking about trains, past military campaigns, and management of the range for effective use of it. Stopped in a small town called Terry, named after General Terry. While Jim stopped at the post office, Kay went past it to check out the church building beyond and it was a Presbyterian Church.  She m
Read more