Our first day of riding

Northern Tier, first day, Anacortes to Sedro Woolley. 44 miles.

We started out at 8 am by saying goodbye to our Warmshowers host, Beth. One last pointer was to have breakfast at Maryann's. Yum.
We (read "Dave") wanted to dip our back wheel in the Pacific AT THE FERRY DOCK. Which just happened to be surrounded by fencing and it was low tide. So, not wanting to wade through mud and clams we went up the hill and down the hill to the boat launch at Washington Park. That turned out to be a really nice spot to do the dip (are you listening Adventure Cycling?). We impressed some folks there who are from Maine and have a beautiful hand built wooden tandem kayak.
And we saw two eagles as we dipped the wheel! Seeing eagles is a sign for us that Dave's son Jon is watching over us from heaven.
After the big hill back up from the launch and a few errands, we finally headed out of town at 11:15. There is a large bridge over the Skagit river that has a nice sidewalk and Hwy. 20 had large shoulders.
Then we were off the highway and on to a secondary quiet road. This is a newer re-route and very worthwhile.  We skipped the gravel trail and found a more direct shortcut to our route. The terrain was flattish except for our detour-hill #3 that we walked today.
The area we biked today was agricultural.  We saw an interesting phenomenon a few times, dust devils.  It didn't seem particularly windy but it was enough to swirl the dry soil which looks like it hasn't been planted yet.
We are camped in a Town Park on the Skagit river in Sedro Woolley.  No showers or hot water but close to town so we could put up our tent first because the weather looked like rain, and then bike a couple of miles to have dinner. The town has a logging history and the town is filled with chainsaw sculptures.
Tomorrow we plan to do 49 miles which will start bringing us into the mountains and closer to the first passes.