Port Townsend to Shelton 77miles

What a glorious start to the hols! After a broken patchy sleep the blue sky and blazing sun got us up and ready for breakfast faster than usual for a Sunday.

I was feeling slightly trepidatious about the likely enormity of breakfast (last night my vegetable sandwich was a generous Americano portion indeed, perhaps heightened by it being 4am in body clock terms when we ate supper!) yet as it turned out my smoked salmon and poached eggs turned out to be just right. Nyum nyum nyum.

After our pre-adventure briefing from Steve and promising not to cycle off with our hotel keys we were off.

The route took us alongside Olympic National Park and then along the edge of what was termed a canal here, but would be a vast lake in our terms. It was super-size!

And glitteringly pleasing on the eye as we rolled along the smooth tarmac (Steve has forewarned us it won't be so smooth in California as they've run out of dollars to repair roads!)

A couple of stops to buy some drinks and snacks. It's baking, well in the 80s and I'm getting pretty salty. We might all look like dry roasted peanuts in a few weeks.

The roads are wide, not too busy and there's a decent hard shoulder to ride in which prevents you getting sucked into a supersize caravan shaped vortex. Or one of the beasties above! 

It really is lots of fun seeing things you've seen so many times on tv and in films and knowing they really do exist!

We've seen folk sweeping their yards, been offered cup after cup of cor-fee and put out our trash :-)

So, tomorrow we reach the ocean and the chance to dip ourselves in it no doubt. The hols are well and truly underway.