07.01.2023 - out of seattle

must have peed 5 times during the night, clambering down from the upper bunk in our 6 bed hostel room.  fell once, that last step was further than i thought.

up by 6, wound up for departure.  but first i saw suzi off.  walked her down to the train station to make sure she didn't stress too much about finding the station and getting on the train.  "what, me worry?", she said.  she got off fine.

then i had to deal with my own angst.  in the end, dan and i were off, down to alaskan way, past the cruise liners unloading and joining all the saturday joggers, bikers and tourists.  it was a slow progression with constant checking of route as we wove the bike paths along the waterways of seattle.  a few stutters, we worked our way along the shipping canal, around university of washington and finally over to lake washington.

i was constantly having to remind myself that this was saturday, there were so many cyclists out. and eagles.

stopped in redmond for lunch at jimmy johns, then back on the trail.  talked with a couple of cyclist as we worked our way towards the palouse to cascadia trailhead.  heading into the foothills and our first climb, we decided against hopping on the interstate and took the long way around, which had the benefit of going past sequalmie falls.

at north bend, we figured we had the time and had earned our first beer stop, volition brewery, where we met another cyclist coming down off the trail and out of the cascades.

and finally, we were at iron horse park and the polouse to cascadia trail.  a rough, gravel trail at 1.5-2% that i could negotiate fairly well.  about 1,500 feet of climb on a steady grade.

we made it to ash creek campground just before dusk and i was relieved to see only one camper there and 5 tent spots still available.  dan and i cooked a hearty meal of ramen noodles and then i had tea and cookies for desert.  as the sun was setting, a father-son from michigan rolled up and took two spots.  they were headed to chicago.  he is a professor at western michigan and we discussed my brewery tour of the coast.  the son was getting ready to move to u chicago for grad school.

mosquitos did make their presence known, but our body smell must have overruled any inclinations a bear might have had to visit.