Week 1

Week One; Well we are on the road and finally riding instead of talking and planning (although John loves that part). The first week was easy in the sense that the rainy northwest has been sunny most days. Luckily it was cloudy today when the hill climb was long (25 miles/3800ft) and the sun would have baked us. The roads have been mostly good, the maps from Adventure Cycling giving us great guidance onto some great back roads. As predicted we got our ***** handed to us with the climbs from the start, more time training would have been a wise choice.
On our first day in Bellingham after,driving all night, a couple of guys told me that I had "options" and that I didn't have to follow "him you know". Hopefully those ideas won't come back later in the trip and haunt me! I think John's safe though since he carries the kitchen, tent, and sleeping bags.
If you haven't been to the The North Cascades National Park yet make plans and do it! Hike it, ski it, bike it whatever you are into just go see it. We were only on the road thru it and it amazed us with the beautiful peaks and undisturbed terrain. It was a great way to kick off this adventure, especially when we got to see a bear wander thru the camping area!
The camping as been diverse from the coastline, to KOA' s with hot tubs, to tonight we are in Republic's fair grounds pretty much by ourselves. It does have showers and free wifi.
John's going to post some pictures and videos on the link, hopefully we won't bore you. For my reading buddies we just started The Big Burn about the fires in 1910. Hopefully it will give us some good back ground info on the west and not freak us out like reading Pompeii when in the Naples area.
Hope all is happy where you are and we will hear from you at some point.

Kate and John