Day 4: No Bugs, No Rain, No Tent

The day starts off in style with some roadside plums. I seem to be living the farm to bike lifestyle.

I think about going to the Anacortes Ferry Terminal, the official start of this route, with a vague idea about possibly running into other people who are starting the same tour. But it would be an extra 34 miles with the backtracking so I decide against it. I need to keep moving east to get ahead of the cold season that is going to be descending here soon. If there are other cyclists on this route now, I’ll probably catch up to them anyway.

I cook up the last of the farm-to-bike eggs around lunchtime. Doing it with the electrical immersion heater cost me almost 8 miles (13 km) of range so I’ll probably use this method only when I’m out of fuel for my stove.

I make it to North Cascades National Park tonight. As the sign shows, this is bear country. I was planning on getting a bear canister at some point. I think it’s going to be sooner rather than later.

This time-lapse video is fairly representative of today’s route. It’s very pretty but the tall trees near the road combined with the low sun elevation at 49° latitude in September means that a lot of my potential solar power is lost due to tree shading. Even at solar noon, the sun is only 44° above the horizon. I’m getting only ~1kWh of solar energy per day. I will need more than that to keep up this pace for the rest of the trip.