We took the train up to Seattle. The ride was much more comfortable (and cheaper when traveling with a bicycle) than flying, but 23 hours was a long time to be cooped up even in the roomy train. How romantic to hear the conductor call out "All aboard!"

We arrived around 9 PM. We left our boxed bicycles and gear in the luggage room and straggled our tired bodies to the American Hotel, a youth hostel. The room was very clean, utterly spartan. Nothing but a metal-framed bunkbed. Good value for money.

In the morning, we took the train to Mount Vernon. The guy sitting across from us turned out to be a former Alamedan. We assembled the bikes and baggage on the platform. How can we have so much stuff?! Ominously, one of my tires was already flat. That fixed, we set off for the Anacortes ferry. That area seems to be the bulb-growing capitol of the world. We passed fields of iris blooming purple.

The ferry carried us across sparkling waters to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. The first thing we learned about bicycling in the San Juan Islands is that there is no flat land in the San Juan Islands. Every inch was either a granny-gear grinding ascent or a terrifying descent. The weirdness award goes to McMillin family. The family owned the lime works at Roche Harbor, then the biggest lime works west of the Mississippi. When San Francisco was rebuilt after the quake, McMillin lime made the concrete. The family built a mausoleum in the form of a Grecian temple surrounding a dinner table. There's a chair for each family member at the table. The ashes of each family member are contained in his/her chair seat.


In 1859, there were American settlers on San Juan Island along with representatives of the English Hudson's Bay Company. An American shot a pig belonging to the Company because the pig was rooting in the American's potato patch. This led to the "Pig War" in which ownership of the San Juan Islands was at stake between the US and Britain. A British military outpost occupied one end of the island while an American outpost occupied the other end. The standoff last for thirteen years before being settled by diplomacy.

On Orcas Island, we found a farmers' market in progress. We had barbequed oysters and yakked with cyclists from the Vancouver BC cycling club. Camped at Moran State Park.