Team Mango

Biking the San Juans

Since Sardinha (Susana) and I hadn’t been to the San Juan Islands in over two years, we decided to spend our three-day weekend biking and camping around Orcas and San Juan Islands.

Day One

We got our usual late start and arrived at the Anacortes ferry terminal in time for the 2:30 sailing. Paid for parking, ferry tickets, and we were afloat shortly after. Upon arriving at Orcas, we decided to take an indirect route through the interior of the west thumb of the island. That brought rolling packed dirt roads and miles of car-less biking through the woods and near the seashore. Eventually we met back up with the highway and stopped in Eastsound, Orcas Island’s main town, to buy some roadside jumbo shrimp for dinner. If Orcas Island is shaped like a horseshoe, then Eastsound is at the top, the ferry terminal is on the bottom-left and the campground is on the bottom-right.

After Eastsound we continued along the ever-busier, narrow, curvy highway to Moran State Park, packed full of impatient holiday drivers. It was a bit stressful, but within the park the road and its drivers mellow out. We found a spot in the hiker/biker campground which was also being used as an overflow campground and thus allowing car campers to camp there for the busy holiday. A short, but tiring day ended with delicious sauted shrimp, a peaceful walk to the lake for sunset, and hours of tossing and turning in bed as the campground neighbors screamed and laughed into the night (so much for the hiker/biker campground — the people who had worked to get there were all in bed while the drunken car campers kept us up all night).

Day Two

The first day I had joked with Susana about climbing the road to Mt. Constitution, a steep grade that leads to the summit of the 2407’ mountain, the highest point in the San Juans. Well, I wasn’t completely joking. We started the day with a high-carb breakfast and pedaled out into the switchbacks. There were maybe one or two other bikers that we saw going up the mountain, but dozens whizzing down (and lots of bikes on car roofracks as they sped up the road). The worst part are the three miles of switchbacks at a 12% grade. After that the road levels off to a gradual climb up to the tower atop the peak, a replica of a 12th century watchtower of the Caucaus Mountains that offers a great view of the islands, the strait, Victoria, and the Cascades.

What took ninety minutes to get up took about 10 minutes back down to our campground where we packed and headed for lunch back at Eastsound at a taqueria. There aren’t a lot of inter-island ferries throughout the day, so we had to hit the 4pm ferry to San Juan. That still gave us plenty of time to meander around the west side of the island on other quiet roads, making our way back to the ferry terminal.

Since we had stayed at the great campground on the west side of San Juan Island in previous years, we decided to check out the south side of San Juan, down by the American Camp. It was also a shorter ride, which sounded appealing after the workout we’d already done. Most roads on San Juan have some shoulder, and most of the island is in a rain shadow with open prairies rather than forests which is better for visibility from cars which made for more relaxed cycling. The American Camp Historic National Park is really beautiful. The prairie grass slopes down to the cliffs just before the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s beautiful, but the campground we were hoping for didn’t exist, or rather, existed only for anchoring boats since there was no road to get there. So we were in a bit of a quandry about what to do. The forest is much better for stealth camping than the wide open grasslands. We rode further down to the cape at the far south end of the island, but the prairie quickly turned into a housing development beyond there. We decided to turn back and head for a beach we’d passed by on our ride in, aptly named the 4th of July Beach.

Climbing back up the scenic hill from the cape I heard a loud POP and looked back to see Susana coming to a stop. My heart sank as I thought her chain had broke which would mean a premature end to our trip. Fortunately it wasn’t that bad, as the pop was her tire blowing out. I replaced the tube, suspicious of the gash in her tire, and we were on our way to the beach.

The beach was empty, and we found a picnic table hidden in the trees right next to the lapping water which became our campsite for the night. We prepared all that we had bought at the island grocery store — lobster, halibut, corn on the cob, and potatoes — a feast after a hard day. The many varieties of birds, attracted to the nearby lagoon, kept us company until after sunset as we set up camp under the stars.

Day Three

We woke early and packed up, which I like to do to avoid any confrontations with park rangers when camping on the sly. We ate leftover potatoes with our morning coffee, using up the last of our water. We decided to get an early start, but a few feet out onto the highway I heard another loud POP which was another flat tire. The gash in Susana’s tire was widening, exposing the tube directly to the pavement. I tried an old trick that I’d heard about ten years ago, which involved stuffing a dollar bill between the tire and tube to hold everything in place. When it was back together, you could see George through the slit in the tire, but it worked.

We still had time to take another meandering route along the southwest side of the island on quiet packed dirt roads alongside llama farms on one side and oyster farms on the other.

As we got closer to Friday Harbor and the ferry terminal, the houses got larger and more ostentatious. Some had private docks with their personal float planes tied up out front. Within Friday Harbor, there was a frenzy of fire trucks and other sirens. I was going to wait to let them pass until I realized it was a 4th of July parade. We rode by and found a place for fish and chips, beer, and some relaxation until the 1pm ferry took us back to the mainland and back home.

Posted by scotts at July 6, 2005 11:02 AM