Thursday, August 23
    Ladysmith, Vancouver Island to Seattle, WA
     170 miles; sun and smoky haze; temps 60-75

This morning I took the BC ferry from Duke Point on Vancouver Island over to Tsawwassen in the SE Vancouver metro area, and from there through US Customs at Blaine, WA, and on down Interstate 5 to Seattle.

I arrived at Chris and Maria’s in Seattle at 4:30 PM, and was ready to be off the bike for a while. The congested, noisy, heavily developed areas I passed through on today’s ride were a huge change from the peaceful, natural, remote areas I had spent the last three weeks in. It would be an adjustment. And I was no longer by myself, doing things at my own pace in my own way; I would now have to fit in with others around me, yield to traffic, and resume my “normal” life. Getting back from vacation is always an adjustment, but it seemed like it was going to be a little more difficult this time. I’ll be happy to be back home in Cleveland.

The trip turned out to be a little different than I had planned. We didn’t get to ride the Dempster up to Tuk, but it turned out that they were having wet weather during the time we planned to be there so we would probably have had to abandon those plans anyway. Other than that things went pretty much as planned, except that instead of riding all the way back to Cleveland I decided to go to Seattle where my son and family live and ship the bike back home.

The Future Awaits…

The ride up to Tuk will wait for another year when I hope to trailer my sidecar rig up to Alaska and make another attempt. I’ve ridden to Alaska twice now and don’t feel the need to ride it again, plus taking the camper will allow Elaine to make the drive up with me and get a sense of how far away Alaska really is. This will also allow for flexibility to accommodate the weather and road conditions, and with the sidecar I won’t have to worry about falling over on loose gravel or mud. While we’re up there I just may take a notion to go over to Fairbanks and ride the Dalton up to Prudhoe Bay while I’m at it. Stay tuned…

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