Coasting Towards The Coast

After a remarkable stretch of ten consecutive nights of staying with Warm Showers hosts, today’s ride began with no clear destination in mind. Whatever the destination, there would be no Warm Showers stay tonight. There was a host along today’s route but she was unavailable tonight as she was already hosting someone else. On the upside, she did offer some alternative suggestions in the way of campgrounds in the area.

In reality, this was probably for the best as it would’ve meant a relatively short day of about 75 km and I prefer to keep my days to at least 100 km. And so, after a group photo with last night’s host, I hit the road for somewhere 100 km away. The somewhere was most likely to be the town of Raymond. Side note: For the second time in as many days, my group photo included a photo of an absentee – this time it was Donna’s son Lewis who was absent.

According to Google Maps, there were a few routes I could take to Raymond. I decided to venture off highway 101 to take a somewhat more scenic route with the hope that I wouldn’t suddenly find myself on gravel roads – that’s certainly within the realm of possibility with Google’s unreliable cycle routing. Fortunately, Google had a good day and, as such, so did I.

There was a notable lack of services along the way but I can’t blame that on Google. Well, I could but that wouldn’t be fair. I was on the road for about 45 km before I encountered a town with real services. Of course, by “real services” I mean Subway. Seriously though, there wasn’t anything else prior to that. Well, there was the Washington Corrections Center along the way but I decided not to stop there. I wanted to take a photo along the fence which was massively covered with coiled razor wire but I figured someone would frown upon that. So, I pedalled on.

My first stop of the day was in Elma and, as previously mentioned, it was at Subway. My first Subway stop in the U.S. (on this trip, anyway). Maybe Subway USA would like to sponsor my ride – after all, the U.S. portion of my ride aims to be longer than the Canadian portion. Everyone at the store was very pleasant and it seems I arrived at the perfect time – about two minutes after sitting down to enjoy my sandwich there was a lineup of about ten people! Timing is everything.

From Elma, I continued on my way towards the town of Raymond. The ride continued to be easy with very little traffic along the way. Much of the early portion of ride was in a westerly direction but, after about 1.5 hours from Elma, I once again found myself back on highway 101 heading south.

As rides go, this one was particularly uneventful. Not bad, just uneventful. The ride was generally easy and enjoyable but not in no way overwhelming in terms of photo opportunities. Remarkably, I didn’t take any photos while on the road. I passed one campground along the way which included a “Bicycles Welcome” banner – I probably should’ve taken a shot of that. But that was about it.

I arrived in the town of Raymond just before 4:00 and ended up going to a real campground rather than seeking out a wild camping location. I don’t know why. But the real campground was only $12 so I was reasonably unoffended by that.

After consulting my travel spreadsheet (yes, again), I discovered this was the first time I paid for a campground since my night in Lake Louise. Plus, this would be my first night in my tent in 11 days.

The benefit to my early arrival at the campground was that I was able to get a little closer to getting my blog updated. Still a bit behind but getting closer. Depending where I end up tomorrow, I’m considering staying an extra day to try to get completely caught up. We’ll see how that goes.

Today’s totals:
Distance travelled: 102.93 km
Ride time: 4:28:59
Average speed: 22.96 km/h
Maximum speed: 58.11 km/h