Spain and Beyond

Orcas Island Biking Day 2:
28.92 miles, 2759 ft ascent, 7 hrs. 25 min.
Daily Drena: Scenic Stops

We enjoyed our morning breakfast in the balcony, taking in the last of the sight before packing up and heading off to our first destination of the day.

The beginning of the day was a steep hill climb out of Rosario up to the main road and was a fore shadowing of the day to come. We first came across Moran State Park and took a moment to admire the first lake we came across, Cascade Lake.

At the bottom of a long hill we ran into the Orcas Island Artworks, which used to be the old strawberry processing plant. From the late 1800s, most of the land around here was used for growing strawberries, which was then processed primarily into jam. However, there was also a strawberry growing contest and the record holder was in the 1910s where a strawberry of more than 9 inches in circumference was grown! I powered up with a pb&j I had bought at the market yesterday while Lorena wandered around the gallery.

Just down the road from the gallery was the town of Olga, which has a post office, co-op store, coffee shop and that’s it! We also found a potter’s home along the way which had a very pretty mossy fence. We hung out for a while just enjoying the view.

We wandered up some gravel roads to find Obstruction Pass State Park, where we decided to do a little 1.5 mile loop hike. The walk had some lovely specimens of the local madrone trees, which are unique in that they don’t form a hard layer of bark on the outside, but rather papery peels. It also has the best beach we’ve found where we settled in for a goodly amount of time, just relaxing and watching the waves.

We continued our journey over to the last outpost on the eastern side of the island, Doe Bay. There is a lovely old school family feel resort there with yurts, camping, and cute little cabins scattered near the shore, not to mention the amazing views. It would be a lovely place to spend a few days kayaking, swimming, boating, and enjoying the hot and cold pools.

With nowhere else to go, we turned around and started heading back the way we came. When we came to Moran State Park this time, however, we saw a path to the side that allowed bikes, so decided to explore. It was the Cascade Lake Loop trail and it led us to the Cascade Falls. Since the trail kept going, I suggested we continue following it for a bit and hence proceeded a lovely little singletrack adventure for a little over 1.5 miles. Some of us thoroughly enjoyed it. Others of us had their husband run back and bike the littler bike to the next section before proceeding with his own 😉 We had opted not to make the 5 miles, 1900 ft climb up Mt. Constitution this time, so will have to come back in the future to conquer that.

We slogged our way back up the road back to town and thought we would take the back way to our inn for the night, but no luck; as we cut across town from East to West, we were denied yet again with no trespassing signs with the added difficulty of a gate. *sigh* Back the way we came to the paved road to get across instead, but we ended up finding the Kangaroo House Bed and Breakfast in the end. It was a lovely place with a quiet sitting room, little library, and most importantly, a hot tub to soak our limbs!

Orcas Island Biking Day 1:
25.87 miles, 2560 ft ascent, 8 hrs. 17 min.
Daily Drena: You Don’t Mind

This morning had a pretty fog on the water before dissipating shortly thereafter. We relaxed in the condo waiting until we saw the early ferry head across the horizon then headed up to the docks to head over to Orcas Island. While waiting for the ferry to dock, we struck up a conversation with an older couple who were also heading to bike Orcas. They were doing a similar route to us, but taking a side jaunt to Deer Harbor, which we were planning to do on our way out to a Lopez in two days time. We were a little jealous of their e-bikes and luggage service as Orcas is the hilliest island and they went with one of the self guided pre planned tours. We hope to be doing the same thing as them 30 years down the road!

After saying farewell to our new bike friends and Lorena heading off in the wrong direction, we corrected and started immediately climbing hills on a country road to the east of the docks. It was a lovely mixture of forests, rolling hills, and farmland with a few miles of gravel road along the way, which was well worth it, as again, we only saw about ten cars for the first part of this route. We met up with our friends in East Sound later in the day and they had taken the main road the other day and dealt with a ton of traffic instead.

An offshoot of the route took us down an enchanted forest lane with ravens in abundance flying about and cackling away in the tops of the trees. This led us to Orca Islands Pottery, a collective of the islands potters where a fourth generation family of potters lives and throws bowls all day, as was evidenced by the prolific amount of pottery for sale. There was one room which was floor to ceiling on every wall just of mugs! We spent quite a bit of of time there exploring the pottery, tree house, and gardens, before heading off with just photos, but the potential to stop back on the way off the island to purchase some bowls and plates to replenish the ones we have broke; over the years. The combinations of glaze colors was really stunning.

After a number of more hill climbs we made it to East Sound, the main town on the island, directly in the center between the two land masses to either side. We settled in for a quick bite to eat at the local cafe where they had run out of most supplies for the day already, so I ended up with a grilled cheese and Lorena had a chicken salad sandwich. We then spent far too much time wandering the town exploring the various shops and art studios until it was late afternoon. We also kept trying to make our way to “public beaches”, which turned out to be a few meters of rocky beach underneath a restaurant and a dock that didn’t even have access to the shore. Yet again, there is far too much private land and not enough public here, with no trespassing signs everywhere.

After the longest hill climb of the day and extremely poor timing of just being after work and thus, tons of cars zipping by, we made it to the Moran State Park and Rosario Village where we were staying for the evening. We had picked up provisions at the local grocers in East Sound as Rosario is mostly closed due to renovations. However, when we arrived, a grill cafe was actually open, although closed shortly thereafter. There was also a little store attached to the cafe and a laundry available, so we thought we would get some clean clothes! Alas, they had no quarters available as they were wiped out by the other guests earlier that day, but we scrounged up two quarters in Lorena’s supply and the lady felt sorry for us and gave us the two quarter she had left. We found out that was just enough for a dryer load, so we hand washed all our clothes back at the room, then biked them down for a dryer load. Unfortunately, one 20 minute dry session didn’t get them all dry, so we are hoping they will dry overnight as they are strewn across the bikes in our room and any surface we could hang them from. We did, however, enjoy our salami, cheese, and crackers for dinner on the lawn chairs with a beautiful view of the bay.