Coffeeneuring 2018: Hood Canal

This coffeeneuring season has seen me traveling much more than usual. First Boston, and then last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Seattle for the first time. Even though November is he rainiest time of the year there, I was determined to get a long bike ride in. Bike rental options in Seattle were much more reasonable than what I had found in Boston. Instead of paying over $100 for a fancy road bike, I was able to find a budget gravel bike delivered to my hotel for less than $60. My plan was to retrace part of the route of the Bicycle Quarterly Un-Meeting.

My bike was delivered by bike trailer at 9am. From Seattle, I took the ferry to Bremerton. The sky stood in stark division. South, there was sun and clear skies; north there were dark clouds and heavy rain. The ferry cut right through the middle, at times pounded on by the rain, at time sailing under the beautiful sun. By the time I disembarked in Bremerton, the weather was beautiful. It was clear enough to even catch a glimpse of the tall peaks of the Olympic mountains in the distance.

 

I navigated by cue sheet, missing a turn a mere 10 minutes into the ride, but once I was out of the city, navigation was easy After a good hour, I reached Belfair, at the far end of the Hood Canal. Suddenly there was a lot of traffic. On a two-lane road with narrow or no shoulders at all that was irritating. Since I was out of water anyway, I used the opportunity for a brief stop at Belfair State Park. A strong wind blew over the water from the west. What was bothersome for me as a westbound cyclist was great for the kite surfers at the park.

It planes!

Soon after I had left the park, traffic disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, for no apparent reason. The road now hugged the northern shoreline of the Hood Canal. This made for a stunning ride experience.  

My only complaints now were the continuing stiff headwind and the equally stiff sidewalls of my tires. My rental bike had 28-millimeter-tires of the stiffest variety. And so the vibrations from the rough road surface were transmitted straight into my body. In Wisconsin we have roads with potholes and buckles from winter's freeze-and-thaw cycles. But we do not have these long stretches of coarse chip seal surface that made me yearn for wide, supple tires.

After reaching the Tahuya River, my route took me inland. From looking at the elevation profile, I knew that I was up for a tough climb. And indeed, Belfair–Tahuya Road delivered. The climb has an average grade over 10%, and I was happy that at least it was short. Once on top, the reward was a view of the Olympic mountains through tall trees. The road turned into a fun roller coaster, albeit a roller coaster with very rough tracks. 

"To the wall, keep left"

Reward for the climb

Tired body, happy mind

Shortly before I would rejoin the shore, I decided to turn right on Elfendahl Pass Road. On the topo map the road had looked promising: dense contour lines on both sides, and the road following a stream. The map hadn't lied, and this stretch of road was amazing.

Lined by tall trees and lush undergrowth, a gurgling creek accompanying me on the windy, leaf-covered road.

Effendahl Pass Road

To get back to Bremerton, I retraced the route I had come in on. I made it to the ferry terminal just in time to catch the 4:30pm ferry. To make it a proper coffeeneuring trip, I bought coffee and a beer in the ferry's galley. “That's the best combo,” the person at the check-out remarked, and I couldn't have agreed more!

Every bike ride should end with a ferry passage!

QC-MTL, Day 3: Trois-Riviéres to Lanoraie

< back to day 2 > forward to day 4
After a good night's sleep in our our executive suite, we made good use of the included breakfast. I had a bunch of bagels with jam and the biketopus had a big serving of fresh waffles. We probably overdid it a bit and thus started our ride pretty slowly. Fortunately, getting out of Trois-Riviéres was much more pleasant than getting in. The weather was pleasant and for the first 10 km we were on fairly quiet road before meeting up with Route 138 once more. In contrast to other days, 138 did not run near the Saint Lawrence but further north; the road closest to the river was Autoroute 40.

Second breakfast in Yamachiche

We made a second breakfast stop after 20 km at a playground in Yamachiche. Once we got out of town, the Route Verte would depart from Route 138 and for the most of the day we'd ride away from highway shoulders. Instead we'd be on gorgeous country roads: barely any car traffic and a picturesque, pastoral scenery. The downside of these quiet roads was that there wasn't much in terms of eating or drinking. We should have stopped in Louiseville, one of the few real towns in the area, but by the time we rode through it was still a bit early for lunch. We were counting on a lunch stop in the next town, Maskinongé, another 10 km down the road, but this turned out to be not such a good idea. Maskinongé was a small village with a big church but not much else. The only lunch option was a depanneur which fortunately had a little pizza counter in the back. Watched by Our-Lady-of-Something we a poutine lunch and a Pepsi.

Our-Lady-of-??? watching over our lunch

The stretch from Maskinongé to Berthierville was the highlight of the day: once again we were on lovely country roads, but this time the roads were literally covered with thousands and thousands of butterflies. We're no butterfly experts, but I think they were Atlantis Fritillary. And yes, they just hung out on and next to the road, flying up and around you once you got near. We had never experienced anything like that and it felt almost surreal. Near Berthierville we got back to the 138 which was being repaved. A nice flagger told us that we should just ride through on the side while the cars still had to wait.

You can't see them, but the butterflies were everywhere

Once we got into Berthierville we took a long break at the Metro supermarket and considered the options for the day. After our bad experience with the hotel on the previous day, we had already booked a campground in Lanoraie in the morning. According to Google Maps the campground would be only about 10 more kilometers and it was only 3 pm. As a nice addition to an already nice day I therefore suggested taking a little detour Sorel-Tracy. Sorel-Tracy is a fairly unattractive industrial town on the south shore of the Saint-Lawrence, but going there involves a nice ferry ride.

The ferry is the only crossing of the St. Lawrence between Trois-Riviére and Montreal

We decided to go for it, and the ferry ride was indeed nice. Three big ships were anchored in the river, waiting to dock at one of the factories, and a fourth one was tugged back out from there. Sorel-Tracy was as boring as I remembered it from an earlier ride and after a short break in a park on the river we took the ferry back. In Berthierville we stopped again at the Metro and stocked up on grillables for dinner. My GPS had run out of battery and I didn't want to bother with exchanging for what I thought would be only 10 kilometers on Route 138.

Wolfgang parked on the ferry

Well, 10 kilometers we rode, and the house numbers were in the right range. We knew that the campground's address was 600-something Grande Côte, but nothing resembling a campground appeared. Since we weren't 100% certain about the house number we just kept going a little further but once we got into the 800s we realized that something was wrong. We checked again on the Iphone, and yes, we had already gone past the red dot that supposedly was the campground. Looking at the address, though, it dawned on me what had gone wrong: we and the red dot were on Grande-Côte Est whereas I was fairly sure that I had entered Grande-Côte Ouest on Google Maps. And indeed, looking at the camping guide confirmed that Camping Chez Denise was at 568 Grande-Côte Ouest, i.e. another 10 km down the road. It appears that the Iphone map app doesn't know how to deal with spelled-out French street names and interprets Ouest as (maybe a typo of) Est. Sigh. We were both pretty tired at this point, having already had our longest day with almost 90 km. Well, there wasn't much we could do other than ride on. And eventually we arrived at Chez Denise.

Our awesome camp site at Chez Denise

Our problems weren't quite over yet, as, contrary to what we thought they had told us on the phone, they didn't accept debit or credit cards and we had run out of cash. Oh well, the next ATM was only 5 km away and so I quickly went back there while the biketopus set up our tent. And what a camp site we had! While the rest of the campground wasn't anything out of the ordinarzy and all occupied by RVs and trailers, Chez Denise had one tent-only site. You walked down a flight of stairs and then were pretty much on the shore of the Saint-Lawrence! No neighbors and a beautiful view of the river which was quietly flowing in the warm light of the setting sun. And a nice porch swing for our tired selves. A good end to our longest day of the ride.

> forward to day 4