Nice ride today. Two ferries, one island. Our destination was San Juan Island. We took a 70 minute ferry ride from Anacortes to San Juan Island. I gotta tell you, they have some mighty big ferries in in the Pacific Northwest!!
You head down to the terminal before the ferry arrives and you see this huge boat come into view and dock head on. They load the bikes on first and park them in designated spots and hurry up stairs to the passenger lounge and find a spot in one of may places on the upper deck
These boats are huge
Since the bikes load on first you get to see how cavernous the holding area of the boats are. The scale is enormous! This route must be very popular. The interior of the ferry was filled with vehicles of all sorts.
From the huge dump trucks loaded first to the passenger cars loaded last every spot was taken.
There were also lots of day tourist like us heading to the island to relax, tour the island, shop and eat.
Our agenda for the day was to circumnavigate the island and to return on the 3:50 PM ferry. Of course there was to be coffee, snacks and ice cream on the way. The route was only 36 miles, however, like all the other islands We have visited, there will be lots of climbing. I just don't know if there is even a flat spot anywhere in this set of islands.
Off we went. The weather, perfect sunny blue skies. The temperatures cool enough to have jackets at the start and removing them a couple of miles into the ride as we began to warm up a bit. Just 10 miles into the ride we reached a very upscale seaside community called Roche Harbor. I know it was upscale because we passed a small airport where we spotted several twin ending private aircraft and a handful of private jets. Just wondering, is this where the rich and famous escape to say out of the public eye?
Well they didn't keep this band of cyclists out. We cruised through the center of town and lollygagged, sipping coffee and nibbling on danish. After a while we were reminded that we were on a schedule and if we wanted to loop the island and make the last ferry of the day, we need to finish the coffee and take the last bit of the danish. And with that we were off, climbing out of town under huge overhanging trees
Cycling is a silly sport. you work like crazy just to push your bike with skinny tires along the road. If you are cruising like today, maybe 15 miles per hour, you hit a hill and if you are lucky maybe you're climbing at 8 miles per hour while keeping your eye on the road looking for the crest to come into view so that you can do it all over again. But on a day like today, you feel the cool ocean air flowing over your skin and cadence of the pedals and the air rushing out of you lungs. You have the opportunity to feel alive as you balance on the bike, keeping your eyes open for any road obstructions and your mind constantly performing calculations of your current speed versus the distance to the top of the hill or whether to squeeze the brakes a bit more or a bit less as you are descending a hill and if with your current speed, if you can make it to the top of the next hill. Spoiler alert, you very very rarely every have enough to make it to the top. But your mind is always running the calculations.
You remember the dump trucks on the ferry this morning? Well later this afternoon I discovered why they were here. A large road construction project was going on and road signs were diverting traffic from the area. Well of course a little bike could find a way to scamper through the construction, surly? So even though the other riders took the proper precautions and followed the recommended detour, I figured to try my luck.
A couple of miles past the detour, I hit the construction area. A women with a stop / slow sign waved me on and said the construction was about a mile and a half long. The top surface was removed for repaving leaving a hard gravel surface that was rideable. Not a lot of fun, but I could manage. About a football field length into the gravel, my phone with the turn by turn directions alerted me to turn right onto a nicely paved road. I smiled figuring the the cycling gods were just playing with me a bit.
I was only a couple of miles away from the ferry landing in Friday Harbor an made a left hand turn to the North and the cycling gods rewarded me with a wonderful cook tailwind all the way into town. I ran into Chris and Kevin who arrived earlier and we found a wonderful ice cream shop. By the time we finished it was time to board the return ferry to Anacortes where dinner was in our future. A wonderful day to remember.
Today's Photos
Brian
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