• Day 0: July 6th - 11 miles
• Day 1: July 7th - 50 miles
• Total: 61 miles

July 8, 2023 | We got to Seattle Thursday morning, unpacked the bikes and went to see some family in Seattle for lunch. Then we headed for the Sculpture Garden on the Puget Sound so we could do the obligatory ‘dip the tyres’ in the water. If you are riding coast-to-coast, you have to actually touch some water :-) Then we took the train from Seattle Thursday night up to Mount Vernon, WA, our ‘official’ start. It was late when we got there and we were both tired.

Our shirts have a very cool design on them that announces to the world what we are doing. In Seattle, we had several people ask if we were just finishing. No, sorry, we have just ridden five miles!

We decided to have a relatively relaxed first day and it could not have worked out better. Tail wind, flat road with a great shoulder and beautiful scenery. We had lunch in Concrete, WA at the 5b’s Bakery. They took our photo, said they would promote the ride and MD Anderson fund raising for us and gave us free drinks and cookies! Great lunch - we were hungry.

Then we rode into Marblemount, WA to stay with our ‘Warm Showers’ hosts, Rob and John Scott. They have an amazing house in the woods right by the Skagit River. I get to sleep in the Solarium tonight while Lauren gets the two-room tent with queen bed. Amazing place and fabulous hosts. WarmShowers.org is an organization for long distance bikers that works on a pay-it-forward system - basically AirBnB for bikers with no money involved.

Tomorrow we are going to try and get an early start to get over Washington Pass - time to warm up the climbing legs! :-)

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