We are back on the road for a few more days. I should not that we didn’t get a chance to do a “shakedown” trip because we got COVID when we were staying in Bellingham, so those first few days to Lopez were our practice run. The main takeaway was that we had too much stuff! As we set back out from Lopez Daisy and I’s bikes were both about 20-25 lbs lighter. This is something that is easy to feel!! We left behind the kids’ bikes (each almost 15 lbs), ate a bunch of our extra food, and recalibrated some of our gear. We felt faster, and were much faster. It felt great!
We took a ferry back to Anacortes at around 9:30 am. The road from the ferry terminal to town seemed much shorter this time! We stopped at Safeway to get the food we’d need for the next couple days. We were heading back to Bellingham and we knew what food was available on the route. This made it a lot easier to calibrate for resupplies. We stopped at the John Storvik Playground again so A and H could enjoy the slash pad. (They were required to eat their lunch first!) Then, we left town via the bike path. There were fewer cyclists and pedestrians in the morning, but plenty of folks were still out enjoying the path and the bridge over the bay. H missed this entirely due to a massive nap, so she didn’t see the mama and baby seal playing in the water which A was absolutely delighted by. We stopped several times to try to just H’s head to help her sleep more comfortably. I don’t think we’ve yet found the perfect setup, but are getting closer.
We stopped again at Moka Joe for a snack. H almost slept through this too, but woke just as we were about to leave, so we ended up staying longer. :). We were able to ride over the pedestrian walkway on two bridges, instead of walk, and zipped along the highway for a mile before getting back off onto the quiet roads. We found that the kids loved retracing our path back towards Bellingham! They knew what to expect: where we could stop for snacks, and where the playgrounds were (that last one being most important!).
The adults enjoyed that we got to come back towards Padilla Bay and actually see it. Last time everything was shrouded in mist and we were under a light rain. Now we had a bright and cloudless sky! We took the couple mile bike path along the edge of the water. It followed along the dike separating the water from the farm fields. It was high tide and we noticed that the water was clearly higher than the fields. This made us ponder the valley’s future after the sea level rises.
We rolled into the Bay View State Park campground and set up in a hiker/biker site. There was one other cyclist there, who said he had been on the road for ten years! We ate a massive amount of GF Mac and cheese for dinner (3 boxes), plus veggies, and went down to the water to enjoy the sunset.
