Pacific Coast Tour – Day 8 – 10; San Juan Detour

Day: 8
July 25, 2021

Distance: 33 (276 total)

Lopez Island

Due to the ferry timings we had gotten into Spencer Spit State Park pretty late last night, so we were off to a later start today. We chatted with several other bike tourers and finally made it out around 9:30 am.

We rode southward through some scenic farmlands with lots of rolling hills but very little traffic. There’s like 4 main roads on this island so for the most part you just avoid the “private” roads, yet somehow we still managed to miss our turn to our first destination. (In our defense it was in the middle of a sweet downhill). Luckily we didn’t go too far out of our way.

Our first stop was Watmough Bay, recommended by our warm showers hosts in Bellingham. We were not disappointed. I think that was my favorite spot on the island we saw. There was a maybe quarter mile stroll of a hike to the bay with a view of Mt Baker in the distance.

Next we made our way across the southern edge of the island towards Agate Beach. We parked the bike again and went on another little hike out to Iceberg Point. Also super cool. We could see Cattle Point Lighthouse on San Juan across the water as well as an excellent view of the Olympic Mountains.

After a late lunch by the beach we headed up the west side of the island for another baby hike out to Shark Reef. The current is really strong out there leading to very choppy water, but there was one brave kayaker we watched paddle across the waters towards San Juan Island.

After wrapping up our “hikes” for the day we headed northward toward the village where we treated ourselves to ice cream. We cooked a quick dinner in the park, hit up the grocery store, and made the 30 min, way too hilly, ride back up to the 7:00 ferry which had been delayed about a half hour.

We had another warm showers hosts lined up for us in Friday Harbor. So luckily our 8:45 pm landing wasn’t too rough. We only had a short ride to our host’s house after docking.

Day: 9
July 26, 2021

Distance: 33 miles (309 total)

San Juan Island

Our warm showers host, Pat, graciously made us eggs for breakfast, so we were fueled up and ready to ride (although not gonna lie also feeling a little tired). Since we would be staying another night with Pat, we were able to leave a lot of our gear with him. Our bike felt so light! Even so, we decided to skip Cattle Point Lighthouse since we assumed the view would be similar to Iceberg Point (on Lopez). Instead, we made our way to the Pelindaba Lavender Farm. Which was awesome. Apparently, aside from the weather, San Juan is a terrible place to plant lavender, but after a lot of effort they were able to not only make it work, but thrive.

After spending a long time wandering the fields, eating lavender ice cream, and lavender beverages, we finally hopped back on the bike to head to the west side of the island.

There were a couple scenic pull offs, and then finally we hit Lime Kiln Park, the premier whale watching spot for orcas. To better our chances we decided to have an early lunch by the water. Sadly we weren’t lucky enough to see any. (The last sighting had been the morning before). Maybe we’ll see some later on the trip. We were at least able to see Victoria across the water so that was cool.

After eventually giving up we started northward toward Roche Harbor with a quick stop at the British camp. We had our first vehicle scare, not from a giant RV, but from a motorcycle who sped by way too fast and way too close to us. He even turned around and sped back by us! ….maybe we’ll get lucky and that’ll be the worst of our vehicle concerns. Aside from that instance the island traffic was light and very friendly.

Roche Harbor had a cute little marina where we stopped for snacks, and got words of encouragement from strangers hearing about our journey. We also stopped at the surprisingly large sculpture park.

Our ride back to Friday Harbor was uneventful. We decided to stop for a first dinner at the vegetarian restaurant in town, Mike’s cafe, where we enjoyed some vegetarian crab burgers. Back at our warm showers we enjoyed second dinner and conversation provided by our host. (Really enjoying being able to eat anything and everything!)

Day: 10
July 27, 2021

Distance: REST DAY 4 miles a.k.a. Nearo…. (313 total)

Being our 10th day we decided it was high time we took a break from the bike. So other that the little necessary bits we stayed off the bike today making it a near zero mile day (or as we heard one bike tourer call it on Lopez Island, a Nearo). We went to a local bakery for breakfast, Cafe Demeter, enjoying pastries and excellent weather with our host, Pat. We then made our way over to the Whale Museum where we learned about the local Resident Orca pods. While sad to read about all the terrible things humans have done to make their life difficult, it was also really interesting to learn about their habits and lives.

While stopping in to grab some postcards at the store, Andrew witnessed a pretty bad ebike crash right outside. Noticing there was way too much blood on her leg, he ran out to help and ended up calling an ambulance. The crashee was very thankful of Andrew’s assistance, and we were happy to see that she was doing well when we left her in the EMT’s hands. Hopefully their vacation wasn’t ruined too much.

We caught a ferry out of Friday Harbor in the early afternoon which was surprisingly crowded and therefore ended up taking an extra hour to cross. The long commute made me very tired (you know cause I was working so hard).

We finished up our rest day in Washington Park in Anacortes. We were able to take some of their scenic trails on foot before getting to our camp chores and calling it a day.

***PS I wanted to mention I have been trying to draw the route as we go. You can find the map on the home page 🙂

Below are the routes we took on the islands though!

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