Travel On a Bicycle Built for Two: Day Three - Fort Ebey State Park to Bay View State Park, Washington

Day 3

May 19th

Tuesday

37 miles

From Fort Ebey State Park we rode to Anacortes to officially start our trip. It is tradition to put the back wheel of your bicycle in the Pacific Ocean when you start your tour of the Northern tier and then put the front wheel in the Atlantic Ocean as you finish. We dipped our back wheel and we are now officially on our way! Just before arriving in Anacortes we rode through an area with an estimated 30 eagles flying above, an amazing sight.

Most roads we traveled today had heavy traffic and narrow shoulders. The prettiest part of the ride was along a beach at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. An otter crossing sign caught our attention and made us smile. We looked for otters but instead saw many ducks including a mother and babies following in a straight line behind her. As we climbed up from the beach into a forested area we were startled and thought the world was coming to an end. Just beyond the trees there was a cargo transport jet that fired up its engines and took off. The islands off the coast of Seattle that we are traveling on have Naval bases on them. At Fort Ebey we heard many planes flying over us. Nothing could compare to the earth shattering sound just beyond those trees, we have never heard anything that loud and did not know what to think or how to react for a few seconds. Our highlight of the day was crossing Deception pass. This magnificently beautiful area cost us an hour of our day attempting to cross two bridges. Someone had told us they would not feel safe riding across these narrow bridges on a bicycle because there is a large amount of car and truck traffic. We saw a narrow sidewalk with walls that crossed the first bridge and our trailer fit so we set out walking across. As we approached the second bridge we realized it was more narrow and our bicycle trailer was too wide to fit. The problem, there was no exit except for stairs leading down under the bridge. Our solution was to unhook the trailer, wait for traffic to clear long enough to lift the bicycle over the wall and Ronnie took it to the other side of the road where thankfully there was a small pull off for cars. Next we
unloaded the trailer and Ronnie carried items one at a time across and stacked them by the bicycle until we had everything except the trailer. Last we lifted the trailer over the wall, carried it across, loaded and rode across the second bridge. We were able to time it with the traffic so there were no cars when we rode across the bridge and were finally on our way again.

At the end of the day we planned to camp at Bayview State Park. A few miles from the park we stopped at a restaurant and ate a relaxing dinner. We rode into Bayview State Park, set up camp and enjoyed the sunshine. We took one last walk on a Washington State beach because tomorrow we head for the mountains.

Favorite sites for today:

Unbelievably tall pines and cedar trees - some of the cedar trees we have seen are 8 to 10 feet across at the trunk. Also, thick blooming wild raspberry bushes line the roads and trails.