We’re now two days out of Seattle and just a few days from crossing into Oregon! We had a short ride yesterday after taking the ferry from Seattle back to Bremerton, biking about 30 more miles and staying in a magical waterfall forest beach state park near Belfair, WA.

Today we rode close to 50 miles to get to Elma, WA where we’re staying at an RV park that hosts cyclists for cheap (and also gave us homemade chocolate chip cookies when we got there).

Both yesterday and today we had amazing encounters with kind strangers. Yesterday after loading up at a grocery store, Dave stopped to chat with us - turns out he regularly hosts cyclists through Warmshowers (a couch surfing site for cyclists). After a long chat, he headed in to get his groceries, and we got ready to leave - and then discovered I had a flat. Dave came to the rescue with his pump so that we didn’t have to fill up a new tube with our little travel pump.

Today, we stopped at a Taco Bell for a quick lunch and met Wayne, who was curious to hear about our trip - and then offered to buy us lunch. He sat and chatted with us while we ate, and we learned that he’s an avid skydiver (and in his late 60’s). He was on his way to do a jump today after lunch. He doesn’t know how many he’s done - more than 3,000.

In addition to our string of encounters with friendly Washingtonians, the scenery has been amazing.

The beach at Twanoh State Park. 

Magical forest at Twanoh State Park.