Day 56: Dang, it’s brutal out here

We’ve taken a bit of how hiatus from writing, but we’re back to blogging! This section of the trip is with Mark and Ryan (Darragh is in Cape Cod with her family and may provide separate blog accounts of her time there.)
For this section, Ryan and Mark are biking around the Olympic peninsula! We’ve taken an aggressive (maybe too aggressive) route that’s 50% on gravel and 366 miles. We modified to make it longer, adding stops in Olympic National Park! As all will laid plans, there will be some modifications after riding in the heat today.
Today was based on a song by Olivia Rodrigo, Brutal. (Although Ryan reports that Boogie Wonderland was stuck in his head all day, but it sounds more like to state we desired to be in, rather than the state we were actually in.)
We did 77 miles + 4 without weight for dinner, so we’ll say 80 miles. It was HOT today. Maybe we should’ve taken a hint when the place we had lunch was shutting down at 2pm when it was scheduled to be open until 8pm. (Side note, lots of respect for the owner who called his employees and told them to close it down ). We still had 30 miles to bike, but the camping around there was reportedly really bad and we wanted to get to the coast where it would be a bit cooler.
But from the beginning, the day started at 6am, with a quick breakfast at Matt and Liz’s house, and then out the door by 6:50am. Our goal, which we easily hit, was to take the 8:50AM ferry. In a stroke of good luck, there was also a top pot doughnuts near the ferry, so we got doughnuts for the ride.
After all my riding in Norway, I was a bit upset that I had to pay for the ferry as a bicyclist, but alas not everything can be free.
The ferry ride was beautiful, but there were no whales 🐳 spotted on the way. Maybe, next time! On the ferry, we meet a couple from Cincinnati who were feverent Michigan fan. The wife was an avid cyclist, and told us all about her biking. She has a Cervelo that weighs 15 pounds, so a different type of riding then us.


After the ferry, we had some lovely cycling in okay temperatures. We took our first gravel section, and had a blast. It was looking to be a great day.
But then, we started up the second gravel section on the route. That was when the start of the brutality started. It was starting to get really hot, and to get into the tail, we had to push our bikes through raspberry bushes. Ryan managed to make it through relatively unscathed, but I got a few gashes on my leg, which burn when salt from my sweat dropped into them. We pushed our bikes up the hill to start, and then started biking. The road quickly turned into the worst type of gravel road, actual gravel. (Ryan points out that sand is worse than gravel, which is correct, but gravel is still pretty bad.) We had a long and slow uphill over the gravel trying to get to the top of the hill. (Excellently guided by my new Wahoo bike computer I may say!) It was hot, and slow going, and sometimes very exposed to the sun.

To say we were relieved when we finally made it to town would be a bit of an understatement. We stopped at the first market we saw, bought water and Gatorade, and enjoyed the AC.
We stayed in that town Quilcene for 2 hours while we got food, and lunch, and brought our body temperature back down.
After we sat until 3, we got back in the bikes as they were sitting down the restaurant. They said we were welcome to stay, but we still wanted to do 30 miles. (Wanted maybe a strong term, we did 30 miles because we wanted to have a cooler night near the ocean).
Those 30 miles were brutal. Luckily, the road was closed too though traffic, so it was great for biking, and when we were in the shade, it wasn’t awful, but after even small climbs in the sun, we needed to stop to cool down. At one point we even stopped at Lake Leland and dunked our shirts in so we could have the evaporation help keep us cool.
If you want to see the full route, you can find it here! https://ridewithgps.com/trips/131484276
We made it to put destination at 5:30 PM. Ryan crushed some of the last few miles, and we were on a bike path for most of it as well! We were pretty tired setting up the tent, and another guy came over to chat with us. He had also biked in, but it sounds like he lives on his bike. He gave us lots of local recommendations, which was nice, but also told us story after story that was almost certainly bs. For example, he told us he’s been struck by lightning 4 times, and was ejected from an ambulance when the paramedics thought he was dead, and then he moved, and the surprised paramedic slammed on the brake, causing his gurney to fly through the front windshield. … Right.
Anyway, finally got everything setup, ditched the other camper, took an amazing shower, and went out to dinner! It was a glorious, but very quiet dinner as we rebuilt our energy!
Based on today, we’ve modified the plans for tomorrow. It’s still going to be pretty hot, so we’re going to do 25 miles in the morning, and then rent a car to drive up to our campground. The day after, we’ll take a bus from the car rental place to a few towns over and then bike from there to the campground. All in all, this will save 80 miles of biking across 2 days, which is great. It’s also supposed to cool down later in the week, which should be good!
Tomorrow night we stay at Sol Duc Hot Springs. Hopefully they have some cool springs as well. And then on Thursday night we stay at Hoh rainforest campground. Which should also be great!
We’re looking forward to some rest! Hoping for at least 10 hours!