The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Pacific Northwest Corners 2024

July 7th to July 19th

Ride Director: Maria Nelson
Ride Co-Director: Ben Satterwhite
Ride Driver: Jan Ciano
Report by: Jim McKinley

We had everything that makes bicycle tourism worthwhile: we traveled through beautiful, varied countryside and experienced places we would have normally overlooked. This part of the Northwest has little exposure to air travel and no large cities; it presents a low, idyllic rural farm environment abruptly punctured by volcanic mountain ranges. The stop-overs provided access to the local food and culture. We had a good group. Some logistical problems added interest; the ride leaders were unflappable. The weather was perfect with temps generally in the 70s, and nary a drop of rain.

A day-by-day account:

1-We started at the Fairhaven Inn, a lovely old hotel in this upscale Bellingham neighborhood just north of a bit of the Cascades that touches the coast.

2-South to Anacortes along Chuckanut Drive, constructed through the mountains in the early 1900s to provide access to civilization. It’s a road in the forest on the slope above Bellingham Bay, with expansive views of the San Juans.

3-An easy ride through Anacortes to the terminal, and a ferry ride to Orcas island in the San Juans. Then, two climbs to cross the island, to Rosario resort for two nights.

4-We had dinner in the island town of East Sound.

5-A steep but short run out of the resort, back across the island to the terminal. The ferry stopped at Shaw and Lopez Islands on the way back to Anacortes, then on to La Conner, a farm town in the Skagit valley tulip fields.

6-Having reached the trip’s southernmost point, there was a long ride north, back through Bellingham to Lynden. The valleys north and south of the mountains were covered with tidy 100-ish-acre plots of potatoes, alfalfa, raspberries, blueberries, sweet peas, wheat, daisies, and dandelions.

7-Rest day in Lynden. Lynden and La Conner are farm towns dressed up to attract tourists, which they do, but many originate from the surrounding farm country and other parts of Washington.

8-North across the border, through larger – much larger – farms, less kempt than the farms to the south. Potatoes and alfalfa were prominent, also blueberries. We saw three-person picking machines running up and down the rows of raspberry farms (who knew you could pick raspberries with a machine?). Part of the route followed a rail line, with miles of high, wide impenetrable blackberry bushes along the embankment, intertwined with blooming bindweed. Signs read ‘Blackberries Removed’ with a phone number: they’re invasive. Settled into the Harrison Hot Springs for two nights, with sunset over the lake and mountains.

9-An easy 8-mile gravel out-and-back from the resort to an alpine lake.

10-Back through the farm country to Abbotsford, the crops joined by carrots of all things. We travelled on a freeway frontage road overpopulated by dump trucks heading for a quarry. It was a day for getting from point A to point B. The blackberries along the way were ripe and delicious.

11-Pedaling south toward Semiahmoo, we came to a T intersection, turning right onto a two-lane road, which was separated from an identical parallel two-lane road, by what looked like an irrigation ditch: it was the US-Canada border. Crossed at a sleepy, friendly border station. More rural countryside hooking onto a narrow spit and the Semiahmoo resort at its terminus.

12- A relaxed ride to where we began, to spend the night in Fairhaven, with an end the following morning.