No turning back

We were too far into the inland route of Washington to turn back now. For the rest of Washington it will be long days of the same mundane, but strangely beautiful, scenery. Since we were just done with the Canada and San Juan tours, Washington didn't seem as nice, but there were a few times were I had to jump off my bike and hike a few feet off into a ditch to say "wow."

It was a good 65 miles from Old Fort Townsend until our next stop at Potlatch State park. Very uneventful but a delightful ride because we actually got up at a decent time. We got to a small town named Quilcene, the oyster capital of the world I think. On a small road I found a nursery that had free wifi, that was where I updated to say we were finally back in the US. My... that has been a long time. One of the managers there was real nice and told us stories about his own bicycle tours and how his own children have done a similar route to us. And we were scared that people back in the states were going to be jerks.

We stopped in Hoodsport to have a small lunch and headed to the Potlatch campsite. Waiting for the showers, I was talking to a man that had done a five week hike on the peninsula route of Washington, going around the Olympics and the monster Hurricane Ridge. He was an older man and he said it made him smile to see us young people do something like this.

We ran into some men sitting around their RV that asked us how our day was going. We exchanged greetings and I asked what they were doing. They said they were celebrating the birth of the nation... it was July 2. They had started early. We kept on walking until I realized I was wearing a Canadian beanie on my head. I took that off quick and stuck it in my pocket.

Before night came rolling in, we headed to the beach for a bit. Nice and blue. Back at camp, three more bicycle tourist rode in and we greeted eachother. Ben, heading of to Alaska, didn't talk to him much, Nate, an awesome guy from Portland that was travelling up to the San Juans, and Mike, a creative writing professor at Stanford that was travelling to Montana, all met eachother on the road. Ben and Mike just happened to be from San Francisco too! We had a good time until it got dark and we all headed off to our own things.

One word of caution, embers+gasoline+bad firewood is bad. I don't really want to talk about it, but just trust me.