Day Two
Bellingham to Smokey Point, 58 miles.
Today’s ride included one of my favorite stretches of cycling, Chuckanut Drive, south out of Bellingham, which is cut into the side of the mountains and winds mid-slope between Bellingham Bay and the summit of Chuckanut Mountain. Looking out on the bay to my right (as I ride southbound), there is a stiff breeze and whitecaps, but on the road I am riding, very little wind. My guess is the wind hit the mountain side and is heading up and over the top rather than in my face, which is a nice change from yesterday. Back in my college days at WWU, I rode this stretch with Joan to visit my brother Bob on the Olympic Peninsula. Near Larrabee State Park, one of Joan’s contact lenses popped out. We searched the roadway for the lens but couldn't find it so we rode on with Joan having “one good eye”. Contacts were expensive then. On the return ride three days later, we got down on all fours to look again—and I found it! Over three days sitting on the road it had become desiccated and stuck to the white fog line. Joan rehydrated the lens, carefully detached it from the pavement and the next day, after an overnight in disinfecting solution, popped it back onto her eye, no worst for wear.
Chuckanut Drive drops down to the Skagit River delta, which is fertile farmland known for tulips, berries and miniature donkeys, among other farm animals. Back when oats as horse feed were a primary industrial fuel, this delta was a solar energy engine: sunlight to oats, oats to horsepower and manure, horsepower driving work, manure fertilizing the next crops. The conversion from oats to tulips has kept the Skagit Delta economy humming to this day.
Skagit Valley
Continuing south parallel to the Burlinton Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) tracks, the Skagit River delta kind of merges with the Stillaguamish River delta, so the ride is flat all the way to Smokey Point, and just a few feet above sea level. We’ll see what this all becomes as sea level rises. Will the next generation dike it and keep the farm economy going, or submit to nature and let it flood? I would bet on the dikes—there’s enough productivity here to justify the engineering.
58 miles today was a stretch, as a conditioning ride. I’ll feel it in the morning, gimping around for an hour or two, drinking coffee at our McMenamin’s hotel in Bothell. Then Joan will drive me back to Smokey Point and I’ll continue pedaling south into the urban core of central Puget Sound. This is familiar cycling, all the way to Portland, after which I’ll be on roads I’ve never ridden.
