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.

Oh boy, mountains!

Landing in Seattle.  A little preview of our biking terrain over the next few weeks.  

We took a shuttle to Anacortes.  We were both pretty sleepy after getting up at 4:30 our time but we only cat napped on the plane and on the shuttle and it's catching up to us now.

When we got to Anacortes we walked two blocks to the Mailbox where our bike had been shipped. 

Dave had been worried since the staff there told him that "something was sticking out". However it turned out to be the end of a brake lever and nothing was damaged! Phew.

Our Warmshowers hosts, the Smith's, are warm and welcoming and came to pick us up along with the two huge bike boxes.

The weather is very nice today which made it pleasant to put the bike together.  It took Dave about 4 hours.  I managed to fold up one of the bike boxes and put it in the other one to save on cost when we ship it back home and later to Maine.

We plan to start riding tomorrow! 

Our route

Our route will follow the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route. You can read more about the Adventure Cycling organization at adventurecycling.org
We will do a variation of the route in the overview map. Our route will cross Lake Michigan on the Badger Ferry leaving from Manitowoc WI and arriving in Ludington MI. We then travel down a road that goes 5 miles from our house.
Of course, prior to that we need to cross two mountain ranges and the Great Plains!
Our first hurdle (hurdles?) are the Cascades in Washington. We climb from sea level in Anacortes WA to several passed at 5000 feet.
After that, the Rockies.
We will go through Glacier National Park on the "Going to the Sun" road (assuming they have no late season avalanches).  It's a bit daunting to think of this especially as the time gets closer. We've been walking some hills here in West MI.

We bought our plane tickets!

On March 28 I posted to Facebook…Just bought plane tickets to Seattle for the start of our cross country bike trip! Woo Hoo!

Your Flight Information 
Wed 11JUN 

LV 7:00am 
AR 8:37am SEATTLE 
ECONOMY (V)

This seems like the first actual commitment to this ride. Even though we are buying supplies, all these can be used for other sports. The plane tickets aren't returnable, although we could change the dates, with a penalty.
They only cost $119 for a one way ticket which surprised me as I thought one way tickets often were just as expensive as a two way. Not in this case. Even better, when I first looked at the ticket cost they were $159, now the price came down significantly so we leaped! Hurray.

Our living room changes into a "try out" room.

Our living room does double duty as a try out room.

We are going out for a ride even though the snow is two feet deep in the woods.

This is the ride we plan to do today...Click on the previous phrase for a map.

Life gets in the way sometimes.

This winter started out with a bang. It started snowing almost as soon as we returned from Florida. By December Dave was grooming out at our local ski trail system (Big M) and we got active with a group called Ski and Spree and skied on Sunday afternoons, usually in the Benzie county area north of us. We led some ski/snowshoe outings for the North Country Trail local chapter. The skiing was some aerobic activity, about the only aerobic activity other than shoveling that we did.
Unfortunately we were also busy not skiing as the rental properties we own had several problems; Dave was in the middle of an eviction. The aging equipment at Big M also had numerous breakdowns this year.
Our huge project that we started during the summer was building and installing our kitchen cabinets and it was less than half finished by the time the snow arrived. We cleaned out the garage, moved into the garage workshops and both guest bedrooms and I continued to do the woodworking and varnishing on an almost full time basis while Dave worked on tenant issue and Big M groomer maintenance and repair problems (of which there were many)!
We had record amounts of snow this winter. The snow totals this year have smashed previous records amounting to more than 14 feet and we aren't through yet, as I write this in March.