Despite having had a late night, we were up early thanks to Kim needing to get to work. We got rolling but the first order of business was breakfast at the Captain Whidbey Inn, where Kim works. She gave us the cook's tour (literally... or maybe the hostess' tour) of the place, which was filled with memorabilia in the form of newspaper clippings, photos, magazine articles, business cards, old military uniforms, and even a diploma from a grammar school in Abington, Massachusetts.  The breakfast was great too.

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Afterwards, we bade Kim goodbye and headed out. It was 10:00 AM. The roads we followed were very lightly traveled, thankfully. The sun was out too... something we haven't had much of here in the Evergreen State. The sky was blue and everything was green, except for the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Mount Baker, at 11,000 feet elevation, was the most prominent. This truly is a beautiful place and we understood why the people around here love it so much.

We left Whidbey Island by crossing an area called Deception Pass, which took us back over to the mainland. The rest of the ride to Bellingham was mechanically uneventful, with the exception of my brief attempt at correcting a noise coming from my pedal. I greased the bearings but the noise persisted. All of this rain, water, and salty air, through which we have been riding, take their toll on the moving parts of a heavily loaded bicycle. I would need to take a better look at the situation once we got to Bellingham.

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Getting there involved climbing through some "mellow mountains," as is  described in my journal. We had also passed through some peaceful farmlands along the way. At the city limits, we were greeted by a sign proclaiming that Bellingham was an All-American City. We laughed because there was another small sign there indicating the existence of a nudist beach.  So this is what being All-American is all about? For my tastes, it was still too cold to be running around so adorned... or unadorned, as the case may be. We had a good time with that scenario after we met up with our friends in town. They claimed not to have been familiar with the nudist beach... a likely story.

We found their place by process of elimination and sketchy directions from locals on the street. There were no such things as Garmin or other GPS devices back then... at least not for a couple of low budget touring cyclists. In the interim, we had quite a tour of the city that is located on Bellingham Bay and has its own port. Located in Whatcom County, there is a lake with the same name (Whatcom) and the entire place seems surrounded by forested mountains. Bellingham lies about 20 miles South of the Canadian Border. Western Washington University is located within the city. There seemed to be quite a bit of softball being played everywhere we went. Perhaps they were taking advantage of a rare sunny and dry day.

When we finally got to Chris and Pat's place, they took us to a gathering of family and friends that was going on in the afternoon. We had fun. When we got back to their place, they served us a dinner of Lasagna. Pat made 2 pans of the stuff. She and Chris had one piece each while Paul and I devoured the rest. Our metabolisms were going full throttle. We went out to a place serving Banana Splits afterwards. Chris and Pat laughed at us when we demolished the Banana Splits. They couldn't believe we had room for them.

It was great to be around some people we knew and we enjoyed their company. Getting to Bellingham was the completion of the first stage of this trip. We left Woodland Hills one month ago and rode nearly up the entire West Coast of the Continental USA. After a break here in town, we would be heading East.