Bike Trip Day 1: La Push to Port Angeles, WA

Riding: 64 miles

It’s finally here! The first day of the cross-country bike trip.

We started the ride from La Push, WA, right on the Pacific Coast. It was a beautiful morning, low 60s and sunny. Good biking weather.

We hit the road, heading toward the Olympic Discovery Trail. Along the way, Ride With GPS guided us to another rail to trail. This one was a gravel road under a canopy of trees. It was lovely.

We were having a great time until I had a little mishap. “This might be the best part of the ride…oops!”

It was a bad omen. As we continued on the road, it became more and more muddy, with huge puddles.

And, unfortunately, it suddenly ended. Apparently, there used to be a bridge over a creek, but it doesn’t exist anymore. The drop off was pretty steep, and there didn’t appear to be a trail on the other side (at least not one we could see). So, back we went to the start of the trail. Ride With GPS let us down…but, it was a pretty cool trail.

Rerouting added about six miles to our day, giving us a 64-mile ride instead of a 58-mile ride. Luckily, we were able to find the Olympic Discovery Trail without the help of RWGPS, thanks to Anita’s good sense of direction.

And, oh boy was that trail lovely. The rain started as we were riding on a road leading to the trail, but soon after we got onto the trail, the rain cleared and we even saw the sun again for a bit.

One last important note. A huge thank you to Brian for being our support person. He saw us off at the start and carried all the extra stuff we need for the trip (but we didn’t want to carry on our bikes). I accidentally sent him to the wrong final location, but he patiently rerouted to the right end point for us. This is definitely going to be a team effort. Day 1 in the books, but so many more to come!

RWGPS for today