New Territory
We have now diverged from our route north and are onto new roads.
We headed to Pizza Hut for our meal last night, thinking of the
help yourself salad bars we discovered on the Trans Am ride. (Back then, we had biceps
like Popeye after pigging out on the spinach, but we did draw the line at smoking a pipe). Anyhow, things have changed
somewhat – Pizza Hut all down the west coast has become take-out only, although
there are still some of the original restaurant seats for folk to sit at if they wish. You can still get a decent pasta bake with bread sticks but the salads are gone!
Our route out of Bellingham was a traffic free gravel path called
the Interurban Trail, following the route of an old railway. This was quite pleasant at first, passing through mature
forest with the odd dwelling here and there. Eventually we were getting a bit bored
with gravel and wondered about switching to the road, but just then the route emerged
onto the road anyway. After quite a few miles of quiet road there was another turn
onto a trail but this one was guarded by a kissing gate arrangement that would
have been impossible with the tandem, bar lifting it over, so we stuck to the road.
Some time later came quite a busy section of road but, thankfully, it did
have a shoulder for bikes. Along this section we passed quite close to Whidbey Island
Naval Air Station with its very noisy fighter jets – I couldn’t quite work out what
they were and failed to get a decent picture. Double tail fin splayed slightly like
the F35 but they weren’t F35s.
All in all its been quite a varied and interesting day. 117km with 1116m of ascent has brought us to Coupeville
– we get a short ferry ride in the morning quite close to here.
The planes are Boeing EA-18g Growlers
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler