A 9am start from downtown Vancouver to a 5:30 arrival just north of Bellingham for a total of 62 miles on a warm and smoke hazy day filled with lots of different landscapes and types of roads.
We reverse-commuted out of downtown Vancouver. This time we crossed the Burrard St. Bridge in the correct bike lane!
We rode to the start of the Adventure Cycling Pacific Coast Route at the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vanier Park just west of downtown.
Then we cycled south on a very nice bike friendly street called Cypress that took us through the nice neighborhoods in southern Vancouver.
After crossing the Fraser River we road upstream along its banks past many log jams storing logs for the saw mill just down stream. Clearly lumber is a big economic driver around Vancouver.
The Annacis River was the biggest and most challenging of the 4 bridges we had to cross today. It was hard to access, hard to ride across and finally hard to get off of. Vancouver may be bike friendly but this bridge was definitely bike unfriendly. We crossed paths with a guy on the bridge who was just about to finish his bike tour from New York City to Vancouver. Very impressive and he looked like Forrest Gump during his cross country running phase.
We found ourselves on a couple of hellacious hills today. Who knew the Northwest Coast would have steep hills to climb? Angela gave up on this one. We're both still early in our conditioning for the trip. We we're supposed to train for this trip??
And of course we had some nice flat stretches where we could make up a little time from the city roadways.
Crossing back into the US we had to go inside again. There was absolutely no line in the car line but they told us we had to go inside and stand and wait while the many agents behind their desks updated their Facebook. I guess they suspected smuggling in our big panniers? And of course I had to give up the orange I had kept from the hotel this morning. No citrus from Canada allowed into the US!! The Canadians are tying to dump their oranges into the US economy, right? I'm sure Trump will bring it up in the NAFTA negotiations.
We had initially thought we would make it back to Bellingham today but with about 10 miles to go we were running out of juice and it was almost 6pm so we decided to try the Silver Creek Casino and Hotel in Ferndale for the night. Tomorrow, Bellingham and beyond!
Good update, I liked forest gump as well as the logs being transported in the river.
ReplyDeleteIt was Angela who first commented on the guys resemblance to Forrest Gump. I think she focused on his face, I focused on his bike and gear as we slowly passed each other on the narrow bridge path.
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