South Bay Trail, Ride #2 -- Bellingham, WA

This is Part 4 of an 8-part blog series chronicaling a 7-day road trip, during which we were able to achieve riding our bikes in 8 different states toward our goal of riding in all 50 states. 

Links to all posts:

Day 1: South Dakota

Day 2: Montana

Day 3: Idaho

Day 4: Washington and Oregon

Day 5: Utah

Day 6: Wyoming and Colorado

Day 7: No rides or posts, just finished driving the rest of the way home. 

The Grand Adventure continues

Day 4, Morning:

Since Mister Just-Keep-Pedaling had ridden this trail last year when he went with his daughter for her college visit and wrote his blog post about that trip here, he said I had to write this post.

So, let's start this post off with the Trove marijuana store that was under construction right across the street from our motel. If we needed any proof whatsoever that "we weren't in Kansas anymore" we need look no further than this.  
 

We started the day by having to take his bike with the broken chain from yesterday's Idaho ride to the Fairhaven Bike shop where he had rented the bike for his Bellingham ride last year.  This happened to be Friday of Labor Day weekend and apparently they have a huge annual Labor Day weekend sale at this shop.  There were people waiting in line outside for the doors to open. They were crazy busy, but thankfully they were able to get his chain fixed within a matter of 30 minutes and we were on our way. We also left daughter's bike that she planned to keep there at college with her for them to do a service tuneup on and she picked it up later that next week.

We then headed to the place were we were to unload all of her belongings. After all, that was the whole purpose of this trip, to bring all of her things to her for college.  This was the last time the van was packed to the gills and we had a little bit more space to lay the bikes down.  With it packed full, this was how it looked. The two black suitcases and the two bikes folded up are ours.  Everything else between that and the two front seats was all her "stuff" we divested of once we arrived at Destination: Bellingham, Washington.



We then headed down to the Bay for a cool and breezy morning ride on the South Bay Trail.

This was the view from where we parked.

The trail starts off with a pretty steeply pitched pier .....



that takes the trail out over the water.





It traveled through Boulevard Park

with a wide boardwalk overlooking the bay


 



From Boulevard Park, the trail crosses an existing active railroad track and becomes the gravel surfaced rail-trail portion.



Although tree lined, you can see occasional glimpses of the bay you are still riding beside....



as well as the railroad track that the trail parellels. And a train did go by on this track while we rode.



After crossing Wharf Street,

 the trail once again becomes paved, running along behind apartments ....



and shops, like this cool community bike shop, The Hub. Articles about it here & here.



There was also some other really great art along the trail in this same area. College towns can usually always be counted on to provide artful eye candy along our bikes rides and this was no exception.







It was a nice ride, very, very busy with people everywhere. With a kid in school out here, I'm sure we'll be back and ride it yet again in the future.



But today, we had miles to put on the odometer before sunset and another ride to get in in Oregon before nightfall, so we had to pack up and hit the road.

He took me quickly up through the campus so I could at least see what dorm she would be living in, since I wasn't with them on the college visit last year.

We grabbed a quick lunch at a fast food Mexican chain that I can't remember the name of (Taco Time, maybe?) that must be a regional thing since we had never heard of it before, and then we pointed the van east, headed for Pendleton, Oregon.

However, remember that this was Labor Day weekend, and apparently lots and lots and lots of people head east out of Seattle on I-90 on 3-day holiday weekends.  Because we ran into this ....

and then this, and it began to rain .....



and we moved by inches on Snowqualmie Pass for the better part of an hour. But we eventually cleared the bottleneck and got back out onto open road once again, and we made it to Pendleton in time to get our Oregon bike ride in before it got too dark.

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