Travel Day:
1024 miles, 35,000 ft ascent, 9 hrs.
Daily Drena: Seattle Beckons
We started the morning with some last minute packing and welcoming our lovely housesitter, Brandon, who is going to fit in just fine around here as he pulled up in a Subie loaded with a gravel and mountain bike. After he settled in with the pup and kitty, we headed off to the airport for our journey to Seattle to visit Mike and Holly for the first few days of our trip. Ironically, Mike had flown into Denver on Tuesday for a work meeting on Wednesday, so he was able to coordinate it where we are on the same airplane going back to Seattle. We met up in the airport and grabbed some sandwiches from Einstein’s then caught up while waiting for our, unfortunately, 1h 38m delayed plane.
When boarding group B was called we said goodbye to Mike the intrepid traveler and sat around until our poor Saver fare was called in the last group of F. Whilst boarding, a lady behind struck up a conversation with us as she was curious about our panniers and helmets we were lugging around. She was heading off to just south of the islands for a Ragnar 24 hour running race on Deception Pass. By this time, we had caught up with Mike so attempted to not hit him in the head with our helmets as we passed him by and made our way to our seats.
The plane ride was a wee bit choppy heading out of Denver, but soon calmed down and we had pleasant flying for the remainder of the flight. Our bikes came through the trip safely, thanks to Annie and Jeremy’s bike bags (thanks!!!), so we gathered them up and started the haul back to the other side of the airport (Did I forget to mention we got some new gravel bikes and decided to take them with us??). Thankfully the bike bags have wheels on them, so that made it easier, although they were still somewhat large and awkward and we were quite thankful to be done hauling them by the time we reached Mike’s good ol’ 4Runner. The plane delay had made us arrive at rush hour, but it wasn’t too long before we rolled up to Mike and Holly’s.
We received a vivacious greeting from Holly, then got a tour of Mike and Holly’s (new to us) house and grounds and then settled in for a delicious meal of lasagna and salad courteously handmade by Holly. We promptly scarfed down two large helpings while enjoying their deck and surroundings. We weighed our options on what to do the following day and decided on a shakedown bike ride, because why not start with a long ass bike ride before another week of bike riding? 😉 After much merriment and chatting, we called it an evening and headed to bed.