Wednesday June 17, 2015

A great ride to the ferry. We were up at 5:45 and were ready to leave at 7:15 am. Our earliest start for a long time. I wanted to get to the ferry terminal to make sure we had tickets for the last crossing of the day at 2:50 pm which would arrive in Sidney at 5:00 pm.

These little drive-through coffee shops were all over Washington and Oregon.

Kit and Ralf had mapped out a great route, on quiet rural roads and then connecting to the Tommy Thompson Trail.

We did have a headwind, but it was a good ride.

We passed the biggest oil refinery that we have seen on this trip, the Shell oil refinery.

There is a very small wetland area which has red-winged blackbirds, abutting this area. Shell uses this wetland area for the advertisements that say how “clean and green” they are.

The Tommy Thompson Trail was very nice, it crossed over a wooden trestle bridge, which had lots of information plaques on it, giving information regarding the estuary and the rehabilitation of the area.

The trail followed the coast line into Anacortes.  Our last few days in Washington have been great.  The rail trails and the people.

We arrived at the ferry terminal at 10:30 – four hours to wait.

Never mind it gave me time to catch up on the blog, picking pictures, and ready to post.

We had a good ferry crossing, although where we had to tie the bikes was a little precarious. Ralf said “I have a 110 lbs, this bike will not stay on this slope”. He moved it in front of the car.

When we got to customs and immigration in Canada the border guard asked us where we were headed and how long we had been away. He was impressed, and said “Welcome Home”.

We stopped to get our bearings, and a couple who were walking towards the ferry said “Welcome to Sidney”.

We spotted a Shoppers Drugmart, a CIBC bank and a Tim Hortons – yeah we are in Canada.

Our hosts tonight are a lovely couple (Frances and Alan) who have cycled extensively in France. They are heading to Portland for a short cycling trip in a couple of weeks time.

We had a lovely meal with them – salmon, potatoes and veges, and a nice glass of wine.

Early night, we are having a rest day here tomorrow to plan a rough route across Canada, the trip up to Nanaimo and our crossing to Vancouver.