The kids went to sleep late, and luckily didn’t wake up early. The late sunset has pushed our schedule back! In the night Daisy felt a bit sick, but thankfully she was feeling better in the morning. Our welcome to Washington State a few weeks ago was getting COVID, and it hit her the hardest. Since then she has been noticeably more tired after exercise, so this effort to bike tour leaves her, well, ready to sleep at night for sure!

Daisy woke up feeling good and made us a chocolate chip pancake breakfast! This went over very well with A and H (and me). We packed up and headed back to the playground before leaving the park. Daisy sat down to pump up her back tire, and it was a challenge. The tire became totally flat before it was back up to pressure! We recommend taking off all of the weight prior to trying to pump up the rear wheel in this case. :). I should ask her if it took 100 or 200 (or more) pumps with the travel bike hand pump to get it back up to pressure. Or maybe I shouldn’t ask.

It felt good to get back on the road and start moving again. Somehow it had gotten to 11 AM already!! Luckily we weren’t in a rush because we were only heading 15 miles to the next park. The morning’s ride (what was left of the morning, haha) continued along the coast, with rolling hills in the cliff-forest. We stopped for views of the ocean and to read info signs. Daisy showed us where some fossils were in a rock cutout on the side of the road! She used to ride this road regularly when she lived in Bellingham. The kids got chilly, so in addition to sweatshirts we figured out how to put the clear plastic rain covers on the wee hoos. That kept them warmer!

We made it down to the flats and it got sunny (less cloudy) enough for me to put on my sunglasses! Pedaling on flat ground is a lot easier with these loads. The sea breeze felt good and we were happy. Our next stop was Edison, at the elementary school playground. Eventually we made it a couple blocks further into town proper and bought some cookies from the bakery and tacos from the taqueria (Jason’s lunch #2). While I filled up the water bottles, Daisy took the kids down the street to look for vegetables and eggs. They came back from the Lucky Dumpster with a couple decorative light switch covers for the kids’ rooms back home, local eggs, and fresh kale and sweet peas from the owner’s garden (thank you!). Yum! We were ready to finish our ride for the day. It was 7 more miles to the park campground, mostly flat, next to farms and along the bay.

We rolled into the campground and found our site. There are three designated hiker/biker sites here! The kids and I continued our new tradition for how to get our sleeping gear in the tent: we line up and throw each bag to each other in a row! There was much laughter.

After dinner we made our way down to the beach. It was rocky and the tide was in. There were many small snails in long pointy shells. A enjoyed trying to find a shell that didn’t have a snail in it. Daisy ran into the mom of an old Bellingham friend and we learned these snails are an invasive species introduced in the 1930s, Japanese mud snails, when they brought over Japanese oysters to repopulate the bay. There is an article in the local news about them. It is hard to fathom that there are billions of them in the bay! However, we did see them at every step.

We attempted to skip some rocks into the calm water (or in the case of A and H, simply throw in the stones) and enjoyed the ever-so-slowly setting sun over the water. Back at camp we had uncooked s’mores for dessert before getting ready for bed. It was an adventurous day with only a couple minutes spent inside!