A retrospective

Posted on October 18, 2011 by macdom

Wow. Two months and 30,000 words later, my Canadian journey has come to an end. Sleeping inside again after camping leaves me wondering, how many amazing sunrises and sunsets are happening right now around the world with nobody there to photograph them? I think I’m going to keep biking to continue the journey. This trip has given me so many new experiences and so much wisdom. If anyone reading this has ever wanted something but has been too afraid to do it, I urge you to stop making excuses and just do it. You won’t regret it.

So, that being said, what did I learn from this experience? Being my first bike tour, I now realize that I brought too much stuff with me. Next time, I won’t bring a lot of things.

Won’t bring:
- Water filter (unless I’m really in the backwoods roughing it, and then I’ll minimize the weight by not bringing all the unnecessary accessories that come with the filter)
- Full first aid kit (I only needed the bandaids, which could go in a zip-lock bag instead of a red fabric zippered pouch)
- Paper notebooks (I only used them a few times for writing. The rest of the time I wrote on my laptop because it was going straight to my blog anyhow. However, if I don’t bring a laptop, I would bring one notebook)
- Laptop with protective casing (next time, just a netbook should suffice for blogging and editing photos)

I might change this next time:
- Using a hammock (With an ultralight tarp suspended over me, it’s much lighter than a tent)
- Getting a compact, lightweight down sleeping bag (my synthetic bag is big and heavy)
- Bringing an ultralight tarp rather than buying a heavy one on the road (to drape over the bike on rainy nights. I learned this after getting a rusty chain)

Did you like the photos? Download the full-size, wallpaper-ready photo pack, all in one zip file here:

Download the photo pack

Anacortes to Potlatch

Posted on October 12, 2011 by macdom

I caught the ferry to Anacortes at 4:15PM, and didn’t arrive at my destination until about 5:45. I didn’t have much time to get to my next camp site, so I was going to try to hurry. I was headed to Rosario Bay, where there would be camping. It was about 10 miles from the ferry terminal, and there were also lots of hills like San Juan island. At several points along the ride, I was treated to nice views of a brilliant sunset. I didn’t think Anacortes was going to be that scenic, but it definitely was.

Sunset over Burrows Bay: the first thing I saw when I ascended the hill just east of the Anacortes Ferry Terminal.

The sunset turned into an amazing burning ember red as I was heading towards my camp site

About 2/3rds of the way there, I started feeling weak because of hunger. I had to stop and make a peanut butter banana sandwich, even though it was getting dark in the trees that I was riding through. Riding in the dark makes me nervous because I don’t trust cars when I don’t have much of a shoulder to ride on. At a few points on the ride, there wasn’t but 6 inches of space for me to ride on.

I wanted to hurry but I kept seeing gorgeous red and orange skies through the trees; I wanted to take photos of all of it.

By the time I approached the turnoff to the bay, it was dark and I could barely read the signs. The last stretch involved me riding on a very dark road in the forest with no shoulder and lots of blind curves. I cursed to myself for not getting there faster, worried that a car would come speeding around the corner to hit me, I pedaled as fast as I could up the last hill. Finally, I saw a turnoff that looked like the right one for Rosario Bay. I was off the main road and sighed in sweaty relief. I cruised down the hill and when I got to the bay, I was awestruck by the last few minutes of the dusk sunset. I took many photos without the aid of a tripod, hoping to get at least one that wasn’t blurry. I did get one, and it turned out gorgeous. Definitely one of my favorite photos yet.

Wow. Just wow. This must have been my favorite sunset yet. I know I keep saying that, but this one really moved me.

After my little photo shoot, I decided to get my headlamp on and start looking for a place to pitch a tent. I saw a trail that led uphill that looked promising, so I parked my bike and ventured up the hill. To my surprise, the trail opened up to a panoramic view of the ocean. it was beautiful, and I immediately knew I wanted to camp here. So I ran back down the hill to get my bike. I knew it was going to be tough to push my load back up that steep trail, but it would be worth it to camp on another lookout point. I pitched my tent and got to making a pot of quinoa and beans for dinner. After dinner, I was too eager to look at my recently acquired photos, so I took out my laptop and pulled them off the memory card. One nice thing about carrying the laptop with me on this trip is being able to sort and edit photos along the way, rather than having to buy a bunch of memory cards and save all the editing for when I got home. That would seem like a lot of work, but bit by bit, it’s a lot of fun.

The next morning, I woke up at 7:30. I got out of my tent and was awestruck at yet another beautiful series of sunrise vistas. Sorry if the sunrise/sunset photos get old, they never do for me, so take a look at these:

The first thing I saw when I woke up at my Rosario Bay camp site

My lens was foggy that morning, and I couldn't un-fog it in time, so some of the images have a soft look to them, which isn't all that bad.

Geese heading south, presumably for warmer weather!

Little un-named land masses in the morning light

After taking photos, I followed my usual routine of oatmeal and coffee. By 10am I was packed up and ready to go. I rolled my bike down the trail, down the hill I came up the night before. I took one last look at the scenery and headed out. My next destination was to Port Townsend, where I would camp at Old Fort Townsend state park. After a few miles of climbing, I was at the Deception Pass bridge, which is a huge bridge without much of a shoulder or bike path on it. The scenery from on top of the bridge is pretty gorgeous, but the photos I took didn’t turn out all that amazing.

The view from Deception Pass bridge. You just had to be there to really see the beauty of the view.

My first instinct for getting across was to take the pedestrian path on the side. A minute later, I realized it was almost too narrow, but I didn’t have room to turn around, so I kept going, trying not to tear holes in my panniers from the concrete walls. Halfway across, there was a couple who were taking photos. I asked if I could scoot by them. They barely could squeeze in between my bike and the wall. Another few minutes of careful riding and I was back on the road. The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, just a good amount of climbing as per usual. It passed through Oak Harbor, where I stopped to pick up lunch and more peanut butter. There wasn’t a whole lot of choices for lunch, and the hot food at Safeway looked good because I was hungry. I got fried chicken wing and a chimichanga. Later I would regret eating that, because it sapped my energy, and I just didn’t feel very good. When I got to the Keystone ferry, I was happy to rest and wait in the sunshine by the sea. Twenty minutes passed, and the ferry arrived. On deck, I decided I needed to true my back wheel because it was getting wobbly again. It seemed that the rest of the trip would require constant attention to my back wheel ever since I broke a spoke back in Victoria. Every 30 miles or so, it would go back out of true and I’d have to fix it again. I hoped I would be able to make it to Portland without the wheel completely breaking on me.

Once I got to Port Townsend, I headed out of my way towards Fort Worden state park because they had hot showers, which was really tempting. I hadn’t had a shower in days and was sure I needed it badly. For a dollar, I got about 4 minutes in the shower. I was able to wash my shirt and underwear, which I would strap to the back of my luggage to dry for the rest of the day. Back on track, I headed to my final destination. After several wrong detours (I blame trying to follow google maps for shortcuts), I finally got to the park after a long downhill descent. When I arrived, I saw a sign that said: “Park Closed”. Damn. I was too tired to try to camp anywhere else for the night, so I decided to camp there anyway. I hoped the water was still turned on, because I was out of water and needed some to cook dinner. Luckily, everything was still functional, including water, toilets, and electricity. I found a covered picnic table shelter and set all my stuff down. It began to rain, and I was thankful to have the shelter with a light and a place to recharge my GPS and phone. I called Shannon from skype with my phone and we talked for hours. It was nice to catch up with her after few days of talking to only myself. I told her I was a little apprehensive about my next day’s trip, it was 64 miles and lots of big hills, including a pass over Mt. Walker. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it because I had only biked 30 miles that day, and was completely exhausted. I think the crappy lunch might have had something to do with that, though.

As night fell, I decided that I wanted to get an early start the next day, so I skipped setting up my tent. I just put my air mattress on the picnic table and slept under that shelter for the night. I was happy that no forest ranger came and told me to leave the whole time. I don’t think anybody even knew I was there.

The next day, I left my camp site at about 9 AM. I was in for a big ride that day, but I was prepared for it.

I had a hearty breakfast with some coffee and started my ascent back up Old Fort Townsend road to highway 20 south. After several miles of pedaling alongside cars, which I didn’t really enjoy that much, the highway joined with highway 101. After an hour of biking, I realized that my front derailleur needed adjusting: I couldn’t switch into my lowest gear, which I would need for that day of climbing up Mt. Walker. I pulled into a gravel lot to attempt to adjust it, even though I had never done that before. I whipped out my phone, and opened up this app called “Bike Doctor”, which gave step-by-step directions on how to perform many essential bike repairs. Then I learned how to adjust the height and angle of the front derailleur, as well as turning the limit screws to adjust the limits of how far the derailleur could go. For some reason, I couldn’t get it adjusted right, and spent an hour and a half trying to get it right. Realizing I was wasting precious time, I decided to call it quits and just deal with not being able to shift into my lowest gear.

After passing the small town of Quilcene, the real climb began. Luckily, I was able to manually push the derailleur far enough to the left to shift into the low gear. I would just have to keep it in a low gear the whole climb. It ended up taking about 45 minutes to ascend, which wasn’t that bad. I had my headphones playing some music to keep me going. The descent was the best part: miles of downhill, not much pedaling necessary. It was a good break and the wind felt great after the sweaty climb.

The rest of the day, I navigated winding shoulderless roads, which passed by a few scenic areas. I stopped for misc. supplies at little grocery stores, and mostly enjoyed the rest of the ride.

Marshy land of Dosewallips

No shoulders on this scenic bridge in Duckabush!

Lilliwaup was a tiny little scenic town

About 10 miles before my destination, I had already pedaled 54 miles. Suddenly my butt began to hurt, because I made the mistake of wearing underwear with my bike shorts. I had an epic wedgie and the friction was hurting. I kept going anyway, determined to make it the 60 miles. I pedaled through the pain, and just kept going and going. It seemed never ending. But finally, somehow, I made it to Potlatch state park. I wasn’t too exhausted to walk around the park a little and take some photos, however.

Finally, I made it to Potlatch state park!

I was happy to find that the campground had hot showers, and gladly payed the dollar for a hot shower to wash my shirt again and feel clean and fresh.

After my shower, I checked the weather on my phone and realized it was going to be raining for the next 3-4 days, at least. Realizing that my wheel was on the verge of breaking more spokes with a bad wobble, I decided I would ride another 39 miles to Olympia and take the train to Portland from there.

The next day, it was raining buckets, and I decided to stay in the tent for a few hours and wait it out. I actually considered taking the day off, but got bored after a while and decided to leave. The rain stopped for a little while before I left, and I quickly shed all my rain gear because it was getting hot underneath it all. I realized I much prefer just a pair of bike shorts getting wet rather than pants with rain pants over them. That just gets too sweaty.

15 miles later, I arrived in Shelton. Because I was still a little sore from the previous day, and my train didn’t leave until the next day, I decided to treat myself to a hotel room at the Shelton Super 8. It ended up being way more than I would have liked to pay (keep in mind, my being accustomed to hostel prices or free camping), but I said, what the hell, and just dried out all my gear, and enjoyed having two queen beds and a desk to work at all night.

For dinner, I had been craving mexican food, so I went to this place called El Sarape, which was overpriced, but decent enough. I got a chimichanga and lots of chips ‘n salsa. I went to bed satisfied, and woke up first thing in the morning. I got their free continental breakfast (english muffins with butter…. oh how I missed butter…. a few bananas and hard boiled eggs) then began my ride. After 6 miles over a few steep hills, I got a call from the hotel. I had left my daypack with my flute in it. “Goddamnit” I thought to myself. I had to turn back and get it. That tacked on 12 miles I hadn’t planned on for the day. So the total would be 42 miles for the day rather than 30. Oh well, that was totally doable. I just always go back to thinking “I’ll be in better shape for it” when I think about the work it takes to haul 70 pounds up those hills. When I was about halfway to Olympia, my wobbly wheel started rubbing against the brake pad, and it was seriously slowing me down. I decided to stop at one of the exits off the highway to do a quick truing. To my chagrin, another two spokes had broken. Not wanting to break even more and set off a chain reaction of broken spokes while I was flying down a hill at 30 miles per hour, I decided it would probably be safer to hitch a ride the rest of the way to the train station. It was worth a shot, anyway. The first big truck I saw, I asked if they were going to Olympia. Of course they weren’t, they weren’t going onto the onramp headed east. The next time, I waited until I saw a truck headed in that direction. There was one guy about my age driving a huge truck all by himself, with plenty of room in the back. I asked if he was headed to Olympia. Sure enough, he was, he said “hop on in”. My first hitchhiking experience of the whole trip turned out pretty well. I thanked him and loaded my bike up onto the truck bed. During the 20 minutes of driving through pouring rain, we chatted about random little things. I asked where he grew up, he said Steamboat island, where there were 50 houses all packed together really closely. I remarked about how he probably knew his neighbors pretty well. He chuckled. His name was Eli, he was the son of a wood mill operator. I joked about how awful the paper mills smelled. He said the worst one he has ever smelled was in Camas. I tried to give him some gas money and he refused, saying he was going to be in the area anyway. I was thankful for the ride. Since I arrived at the train station much earlier than expected, I was able to get the 1PM train instead of the 7PM train. That saved me many boring hours waiting at this teeny Amtrak station. On the way back on the train, I watched a movie, “127 hours,” which I had avoided watching until then because I couldn’t bear the thought of watching some guy cut his own arm off. As I expected, that scene was almost unbearable to watch. I’m sure people across from me were wondering why I was cringing and putting my hands up to my face in gestures of pain. Overall though, the movie reminded me of how we should always live like we might die tomorrow. Things like remembering to tell your family and loved ones how much you really appreciate them, or going out and doing the things you always wished you had the time to do. If we really lived like today was our last day on earth, how would our actions differ from our normal, habituated life?

Arriving back in Portland was a little surreal. I walked my bike from the train station to my friends Chris and Natalie’s apartment, which is conveniently close downtown. I passed by my old office at Jama, reliving the memories of biking to work up Hoyt street every day. I had gotten to know this part of town really well that year, so it was kind of a trip back down memory lane. Everything still seemed the same as before I had left. Not much changed. Arriving at the apartment, I knocked on the door and was happy to see Natalie again. I thanked her profusely for letting me borrow her Canon D70 camera for 2 months. It was so important for me to be able to share the remarkable beauty of the landscapes I had visited with a nice camera. I can’t believe I actually considered not taking a camera because I could just my iPhone’s poor quality camera.

I must have been talking a mile a minute about all the stories from the past two months, I had so much to share. When Chris got home a few hours later, I gave them a photo slideshow. They told me how awesome the photos were, and how they wanted to use them for desktop wallpapers for their computers. That gave me an idea. What if I put up a collection of full-resolution images for people to download? And what if I asked for a pay-what-you-want donation to fund the purchase of my own digital SLR camera so I can continue taking photos of beautiful landscapes? Realizing that I have a really nice selection of wallpapers on my hands now, I have yet to decide what to do with them. I think I might just do the donation-based download of photos. Thoughts? Leave them in the comments below.

: Wow. Just wow. This must have been my favorite sunset yet. I know I keep saying that, but this one almost brought me to tears.

: My lens was foggy that morning, and I couldn't un-fog it in time, so some of the images have a soft look to them, which isn't all that bad.

: Little un-named land masses in the morning light

: The first thing I saw when I woke up at my Rosario Bay camp site

: Geese heading south, presumably for warmer weather!

: Sunset over Burrows Bay: the first thing I saw when I ascended the hill just east of the Anacortes Ferry Terminal.

: I wanted to hurry but I kept seeing gorgeous red and orange skies through the trees; I wanted to take photos of all of it.

: The sunset turned into an amazing burning ember red as I was heading towards my camp site

: The view from Deception Pass bridge. You just had to be there to really see the beauty of the view.

: Marshy land of Dosewallips

: No shoulders on this scenic bridge in Duckabush!

: Lilliwaup was a tiny little scenic town

: Finally, I made it to Potlatch state park!

Sidney, BC & San Juan Island

Posted on October 11, 2011 by macdom

After I left Shannon’s apartment complex, I caught the sky train to the bus that would take me to the ferry terminal. I was originally planning to go from Victoria to Port Angeles. But, after purchasing “Bicycling the Pacific Coast” on my kindle and reading through it a bit, I realized that it would probably be wise to follow the directions from the book. Their recommended route was from Sidney to San Juan and Orcas island, to Anacortes, WA. At first, I had thought that I had seen a few of the islands in BC, so I had seen them all. But, then I was thinking, well, I haven’t seen any of the islands on the American side, so I’ll check out San Juan island. After all, most people I know in Portland have been there, so I figured I should check it out while I was in the area. When I got to Sidney, I realized that I had already missed the one ferry of the day, so I’d have to wait till the next day. Luckily there was a camp site nearby, so I decided I would stay there that night. The rest of the day I spent taking photos, hanging out at a coffee shop, and catching up with people online.

One of the interesting things about Sidney is all the statues of people around the city. They were built by artist Nathan Scott. I really liked the one on the bench by the ocean.

I was glad I wasn’t in a rush. After the sun set, I biked back to the camp site and pitched my tent in the dark. I cooked up an easy dinner of instant corn chowder that I bought in Vancouver, and read for the rest of the night. Sleep was easy, and before I knew it, the sun was streaming through the woods into my tent. It was 7AM. I wanted to get an early start on the day, so I jumped out of my tent and made some oatmeal. Making breakfast, cleaning dishes, and packing up my camp site took about 1.25 hours. By 8:30, I was out and headed to the beach to enjoy the increasingly rare sunshine for a bit. I got some great photos of a heron.

A blue heron fishes for its breakfast

I got a little too close for the heron's comfort; it flew away and I captured it in flight.

About 10 minutes before the ferry departed, I biked to the terminal and entered the small customs building. They asked the usual border-crossing questions, I showed them my passport and boarded the ferry. Instantly, I felt like there was a big difference between BC ferries and the Washington government-run ferries. For one, it felt just like our government — aging towards obsolescence. They must have built this ferry in the 70′s. It had ugly flourescent lights, the chairs and benches seemed like they were straight out of an old high school.

The Washington government-run ferry seemed really outdated and ugly compared to BC ferries

A few things about the ferry put me at unease. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights or all the vending machines. The informational displays in the ferry were about the military history and influence on the ferry. There were signs everywhere saying “Assaults on washington state employees will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law”. I counted at least 5 of these signs. Why did they feel they needed to remind us about law and punishment so frequently? The vending machines had stickers on them saying something like “Healthy choices: All food meets the following nutritional requirements….” Then proceeded to list number of calories, grams of carbohydrates, etc. Of course, the food was all junk. But the fact that they were saying it was healthy was just false advertising. In Canada, I felt like they were more truthful in their public notices and displays, for example, in the sky train terminal, they had posters warning not to overuse antibiotics. Just little things like that made me realize I like certain things about Canada more than the states.

When the ferry pulled into Friday Harbor, I rolled my bike onto land, to be intercepted by a border guard in a uniform that looked made him look like a police officer. He asked me where I was from, how long I’d been in Canada, why I was in Canada, and if I purchased anything. The usual customs procedure. It was actually less of a hassle than I’ve experienced in the past with customs. He let me pass, and I started riding up the hill. This was my first opportunity to follow the directions in “Bicycling the Pacific Coast,” which was on my Kindle. I’m actually really pleased with using the kindle as a cue sheet for cycling, with point-by-point directions from the book. I just put the kindle in my transparent, rain-proof map case on the handlebar bag along with my GPS and I’m able to press the “next page” button through the plastic as I pass each waypoint. The only thing I wasn’t too pleased with was most of the mile marker numbers in the book are incorrect (which, I knew about in advance from the Amazon.com reviews of the book). No matter, I was still able to navigate successfully around the island without using the mile markers. I did end up using a map I got from the info center by the ferry.

Like many of the gulf islands, San Juan island is pretty hilly at times. The total length of the tour around the island was 31.3 miles, which isn’t too bad, but requires a considerable amount of effort once you factor in all the climbs.

One of the first things I saw was so random… A camel. Who keeps camels in the Pacific Northwest? I saw this camel off in the distance and stopped at the fence to take some photos. Before I knew it, the camel was curious and came right up to me.

Moanie the camel on San Juan island

Pucker up for a big camel kiss!

Turns out, there is a story behind the camel. I googled “San Juan Island camel” and found this story. Her name is “moanie” because she would make a moaning sound whenever her owner left her side. From the article, it says: “Camels bond very strong with whoever raises them. They’re very tender animals; she loves to kiss”

After the random camel, I stopped at various bays and viewpoints. For a snack, I stopped at a viewpoint of Roche Bay, overlooking a harbor filled with yachts and sailboats. I saw some blackberry bushes all around. They weren’t at their peak ripeness, but there were still some good ones left, alongside a lot of moldy ones. I decided to collect as many good ones as I could find and save them for oatmeal the next morning (my new favorite camp breakfast was peanut butter oatmeal with blackberries in it) Afterwards, I decided to head to San Juan county park to set up camp for the evening. I only had a few hours of sunlight left, so I figured I would do the rest of the loop the next day. On the way, I stopped at English Camp, which is a historical site where there was a dispute between the English and the Americans that almost erupted into war.

English Camp at San Juan Island

The dispute was over the killing of a pig, which ended in a territorial fight ending in the British ceding. The restored buildings were rather plain, rectangular whitewashed wooden structures. It made me think about how the utilitarian style of architecture characterized by western civilization is often so boring and… square. Thinking back to what interested me much more, I remembered the geodesic dome houses on Denman Island. I wanted to learn how to build like that. Forget making square houses.

When I arrived at San Juan county park, I was greeted by a park ranger. I said hello back to him and just rested for a bit on a picnic table, soaking in the view of the bay. The park had good western exposure along the coastline, so I was going to watch the sun set that evening. All of the camp sites were in boring spots, and of course you had to pay for them. I eyed a trail up to an elevated ridge with a coastal bluff viewpoint. Hiking up to the top, I quickly decided I wanted to camp on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the ocean below, as that was my favorite kind of camping spot. I’m not sure if I was supposed to camp there, but I figured it would be alright since I’m a leave-no-trace kind of camper.

My camp site at San Juan county park

The site was beautiful, and I was just so pleased that I had a sunset to watch as I prepared my dinner. Soon after I set up my tent, I heard a crash in the bushes. Slightly startled, I looked over my shoulder. It was a young deer eating his dinner of grass. I hid behind a tree so he wouldn’t see me. Slowly, I took my camera out of my bag and decided to stalk the deer to get some good sunset deer photos. I needed to move to a better spot, so that I could get a silhouette shot rather than a dark blurry image of the deer in the woods. Slowly, I crept to a better viewpoint. Whenever the deer looked up at me, I froze until he went back to munching grass. Eventually, I was at a good spot for taking photos.

The light wasn't bright enough to get a clear image, so my first photo ended up being kind of blurry as the deer was walking.

Oh well, it was still a pretty good photo. The second photo I got was when I moved to a different viewpoint, and the deer poked his head above a ridge just in time for me to snap one more photo.

A young deer peers over the hill at me

Then I tried to get closer, and he ran away. I ended up getting two decent photos that I was very happy with. After that, I snapped some more photos of the beauty of the coastal sunset.

The next day, I awoke to a bit of rain and clouds, so I slept in. I didn’t think anybody would be out on the path early in the morning on a rainy day, so I wasn’t in a rush to pack up my camp site. I ate my blackberry peanut butter oatmeal, thinking to myself that it wasn’t quite as sweet and juicy as last time. Blackberry season was mostly over. It was still good though. The rest of the ride back to Friday Harbor was pretty uneventful. Just lots more big hills to climb, this time I was more sore than the day before. Oddly enough, the most sore part of me were my pectoral muscles from tensing them while I pulled on the handlebars.

Back at the harbor, I got some coffee and wifi to catch up on e-mails and write a little bit while I waited for the ferry that would take me on to my next destination, Anacortes.