The Whidbey Trip (and first time on the superslab)

My bike on the right, my neighbor Doug's on the left

What a great day for riding today. A couple of members of the gang and a guest or 2 got together this morning to head out for a trip to Whidbey Island. The weather was going to get to about 70 degrees, so we were all pretty excited to spend the day on a nice long ride.

Another shot of my ride, ain't she a beauty

After a little bit of a rough start.....Phil took the lead and went a really round-about way to get to the ferry. I was in the rear and got stuck at a light. I had no idea where everyone went and after stopping and a few texts and calls, we all figured out where to meetup. We're learning the group riding piece. Ok, so once we got to the ferry waiting area, the ferry was loading and we literally had to run to buy tickets, get mounted up, and race to get the last spots on the ferry.

Some of the bikes on the ferry

Bye bye Mukilteo

Once we landed on the other side, we headed north. Everyone decided to have me lead as I had mapped out a route last night. We stopped so Mel could gas up, then headed out on the ride. I picked some winding backroads to keep us off the main highway, and avoid traffic. The first road was great, with plenty of twists and turns, some beautiful forests, and best of all, NO traffic! After several miles, we ended up in the seaside town of Langley. We decided to stop for some lunch at the Doghouse tavern. It's a very very old place and looks about the same is it probably did 50 or more years ago. The urinal in the men's room was probably the original and not anything I would ever want to have to clean.

The bikes parked up the street from the Doghouse

After lunch, we headed north out of town onto some more twisty, windy and relatively traffic-less roads. We did get stuck behind some moron in a Volvo going 5 under the speed limit for a couple of miles before we could pass. I got my first chance to pass a car on a two-lane road! It was quite the rush and remarkably easy...gotta love the power of the cycles. We wound our way around, back onto the main highway, and then off towards the Keystone ferry dock. What a fun road! It was across a wide open plain with the Puget Sound off to the side. We then pulled into Fort Casey for a much needed break.

A view walking towards the defensive wall

Map of the Fort

Fort Casey was a WWII defensive fort with a bunch of cannons aimed across the sound. Some of the largest naval battles of WWII were fought here. Ok, maybe not......in fact, none of the guns were ever fired.


One of the long range cannons

A closer view

We walked all around the Fort. It's a pretty cool place, lots of concrete went into building it. I wonder what life must have been like for those lucky enough to be staioned here as the views are amazing from here.

Looking across the sound from the fort

Well, enough time at the Fort, it was time to head out on the highway and look for adventure, we got our motors running.....hmm....sounds like song lyrics or something. Anyway, we hit the main highway and headed north towards Oak Harbor. After we passed Oak Harbor, we continued north across Deception Pass. Sorry, I did not get the chance to take any pics here as we did not stop, but we did see 2 bald eagles overhead. I almost crashed while trying to watch them, ride a motorcycle, avoid pedestrians, avoid other cars, chew bubblegum.....all at the same time!

We ended up north then east on highway 20. I decided to take the group south onto Best Rd. It's a great side road that winds through farm country, past the growing tulips and ends up meeting up with I-5. This was a great choice....until.....we got about 5 miles from the end and there was a line of cars as far as the eye could see. WTF???? Looks like everyone who headed up to see the tulips was using this road. It sucked crawling along and having to constantly hold the clutch lever and try to not put your foot down. Mel, who was bringing up the rear, later told us he was playing a game...."see who would put their foot down first." Guess who it was....yeah...me.....but it was only because I was in front and when the damn truck in front of me stopped, what else was I going to do???

After about 20 minutes of the grind, we finally met up with the superslab....I-5. This was it....my first time on the big highway. I was a little nervous, but quickly jumped to 70 mph, only to see everyone else in my group blow past me! I guess I was going too slow, or maybe they were sick of following me. Oh well, Mel hung back and made sure I was ok. Thanks Mel! It was actually not too bad, except my damn sunglasses kept sliding down my nose...that's what you get for buying Wal-Mart sunglasses. The only scary part, passing Everett, the road was under construction and had been graded. At 70 mph on wavy pavement, being on a motorcycle is not fun! As you can guess, I survived and we made it home.

That wraps up the trip. We saw some great sites, the weather stayed amazing the entire time, the temp was just about right, and noone had any issues! Thanks to Doug, Mel, Phil, K, and Robert for following me and helping make this a fun trip.

Total miles: about 130
Total time: around 6-7 hours