After finishing up our week in Anacortes, we headed over to Lararbee State Park near Bellingham, WA. We’ve been on the road for 8 months at this point – I think Larrabee was the worst campground experience we’ve had yet! Our site was very difficult to get in to, it was very dark, there was a train on one side of the campground (they even had a sign that said “warning: excessive train noise”), and the other side was a road that must be the spot to test out loud exhausts. Oh, and a navy helicopter was running low-altitude drills directly over camp! Also, if you ever go here, do not attempt the road from the south – it’s completely unsuited for trailers.
Despite the unfortunate campground, we made the most of our time here with some nice hikes, bike rides and walks.
After our time in Bellingham, we headed down the road to a nice little campground east of Seattle. It was called Tolt-MacDonald park, in Carnation, WA. We really liked it!
The first day we were in the Seattle area, we went for a ride at Tiger Mountain. It was a hefty climb to the top, but all down hill after that was really fun! The climbing was very manageable. – spectacular trail-building! We were really feeling the humidity, though. Despite cool temps, we were dripping in sweat.
The next couple days we rode at Duthie Hill, a mountain bike park in the suburbs of Seattle. It was a blast! They had a lot of progressive features, so you can start off on a small jumps/drops and work your way up. There were mobs of kids there – clearly still summer!
While riding at Duthie on my first day there, I broke my hub. Likely not a result of riding there, I’ve had this happen a couple times before. Inside the hub, there’s a gear that screws into the fixed portion of the wheel that the cassette/free-body rotates in. I stripped out the threads that gear screws into. I ended up finding a new wheel at the 5th bike shop I went to the next day, and sent my broken one off for warranty repair.
All in all, we would skip Bellingham in the future and spend more time around Seattle. We had an excellent time at Tolt-MacDonald, even though we only stayed 4 days. When we booked, that’s all we could get – turns out they had some festival going on the weekend after we left.
Next up, we moved a few hours south to Mt. Rainier.
-Kyle