Today we spent the day in Twisp, buying some food and visiting the washworks Laundry. It was good to get these jobs done.
The weather is now really sunny, hopefully it will stay this way. The town seems nice fairly small but most things that could be needed are here.
The picture attached is of the road we rode on yesterday.
Woken to rain we left Rockport after meaning a puncture on my rear wheel, which delayed us a little.
We headed out of Rockport buying some bread at the general store. Stopping at the Northern Cascades Visitors Centre in Newhalem to eat out lunch. The weather was a bit changeable sometimes good sometimes bad. It got a lot better after our lunch stop. We cycled on and found a steam train that had been used help move stuff for the building a hydroelectric power-station.
After cycling on a little way we heard somebody calling us it was our hosts for our stay in Lake Stevens. They had very kindly come on a drive out and brought us some lunch. We eat some there and then and took some with us. We said our goodbyes and head off.
The climb was long and hard and raining and there was also some down as we were going up which is always depressing. We made it to Rainy Pass 4855 feet 1480 meters. This was a little rest area with quite a bit of snow on the ground. We stopped cycling at about 8pm this is the latest ever. We cooked dinner in the shelter of the toilet, that later became Cliff bedroom. I opted to sleep in my tent.
It was pretty cold at the top of the mountain but I put all my clothes on and it was warm enough.
I slept well I think this mainly due to how tired I was other than the comfort of our surroundings.
TODAY
Coffee was good we cycled down a bit and then up to Washington Pass 5477 feet 1669 meters. We stopped to look at the view it was closed for some construction work but we carefully managed to see the view.
The downhill was good and long, we put more clothes on to keep warm from the wind chill. We arrived in Mazama and had a look around a good but pricey general store. Carrying on to Winthrop which looked like disneyland but I think it was just an old town, and could have done with a roundabout at the big junction. There were a lot of motorbikes in town due to the Tumbleweed Run Motorcycle Ralley.
We carried on Twisp where we are staying with a warmshowers person. The house is a lovely cottage a bit away from the town. We are going to head into the town for some food, beer and wifi.
We are now at the Twisp Pub enjoying some wifi about to eat some food and drink some beer. The pub is pretty nice so far well the water we have got is good.
So far the landscape in america is very big big mountains big rivers, big skys. It some places it looks unreal like a film set almost. The mountains were pretty spectacular and the downhill
In America they make the beer cold. The beer pictured is a Oatmeal Stout, Rolled oats add richness to this smooth dark ale.
Today we started of cycling with our host from Lake Stevens. The first part of the route was alone another new trail that had been recently opened.
We stopped at a small town IGA the same supermarket we shopped at a bit in Australia.
We said good bye to our host, and cycled on highway 530 until we got to Rockport. We were planning to wildcamp but found a reasonably price campsite, after visiting a local store and petrol station.
After a basic pasta dinner we headed to local pub, we were surprised that it had free wifi. There has been limited phone signal so far.
Tomorrow we will head up highway 20 into the mountains. I think it will be lots of climbing.
So far america has been friendly to us, tonight there were a few too many insects. Beer in america is better than I was expecting.
You can see that as we upgraded in Australia we have also upgraded in the USA and now got a car and caravan, hopefully it will make the hills tomorrow a little easier.
Yesterday we started cycling out of Seattle. It looked like a nice city but navigation was pretty hard work, until we got onto the interurban trail. This was a bike path that used to be an old tram track it was fairly well signed and looked pretty new. The route took us north and we headed to Lake Stevens.
In Lake Stevens we are staying with some warmshowers people. After taking a shower we sat down to a lovely meal. The people we are staying with amongst lots of other things that do the catering for the American Adventure Cyclist supported bike tours.
Today we are doing a bit of washing and some route planning as well as well as heading to the Lake Stevens shopping area to get a haircut and maybe some supplies.
We have returned Cliff has no hair and my beard is a little tidier. I have been reading a lot of the adventure cyclists magazine called go the distance it is pretty good read apart from it is very bike focused.
We had another good dinner before bed getting ready to start our ride again tomorrow, it will be the first night camping in a while.
So after spending some time in Tokyo we said good bye to Cliffs father at the airport and boarded our flight to Seattle via LAX. The Singapore airlines flight was very nice on a new massive plane there were a lot of films to pick from and the food was okay. The only annoyance was not having to climb over and sleeping person to get to the toilet.
On my last day in Tokyo I went to the Edo national museum which had a lot of building reconstructions from the Edo period. Thinking I was booking myself on a complimentary group tour I got a free individual tour of the museum which was very informative and saved me the effort of reading the information boards.
At the museum there was also a temporary exhibit on the 100 years transport history of Tokyo all of this was in Japanese so most of it was lost in translation.
So now we are in Seattle and staying with someone from warmshowers who has a great bike shop where we changed our cassettes and chains.
The time difference is a bit crazy so I slept pretty well last night but I think this was more down to tiredness rather than anything else.
Today we are doing a bit of shopping maps etc before heading off tomorrow. We shopped at safeways and are now members it saved us four dollars.
We stop at a fastfood restaurant call Jack in a Box and had a big or maybe it was called massive chicken sandwich before cycling back to our hosts house passing over a bridge which gave us a good view of Seattle city centre.
We are now watching snakes on a plane!
So I left Kyoto and headed to the “Art Islands”. I got the train to Uno Port then head to Naoshima Island. It is hard to describe what this island is like it is very small, and used to be an old fishing town. The Island has a few art galleys on it which are really unexpected. It is hard to describe what it is like cycling around a relatively empty island (i rented a very bad bike) and coming across these amazing museums. Some of the art is great like world flag ant farm, which is an ant farm made up of the worlds flags, as the ants go through it the flags change、and you can see the tunnels where the ants have been.
On Naoshima I went to the following musuems:
This was a lot of art for one day! The Benesse House was open till 9pm so I went back again to look at it at night time. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures inside the museums but the buildings they are spectacular. There is also random art dotted around the island.
I stayed on the island for one night at the Seven Beeches which was simple but clean and had AC. I had dinner at and BBQ restaurant my hands got quite hot until I got given the tongs to turn the food with, before I was using chop sticks. It was a good meal though.
After my stay on Naoshima I headed directly to Teshima with a fairly new museum that had just opened in 2010. This was basically a big concrete structure which you walked into with two “windows” at each end. What bubbled up from fountains and sort of flowed around like rain drops on a window.
The weather over the last few days has been unbelievably hot and sunny.
After the day on Teshima I headed directly back to Uno. I stayed at Uno Slope House this was the owners old family home. Max the owner spot fluent English and it was really interesting to learn more about Uno an how it has changed from a major port to a much smaller one due to the building of a bridge which connects the mainland which has reduced the amount of traffic using the ports. Max also talked about the heavy industry which is on some of the inland sea islands and the problems this causes. After talking with Max for a bit I borrowed one of the bikes he has and cycled around Uno for a bit and got some dinner in a Ramen bar where I met the other guest at the slope house he was from the USA. More information the Benesse history on the island can be found here. I think want makes the island so special is that the art is so unexpected and because it is quite an effort to get there it is relatively quite which is nice, its one of those places you want to tell everybody about because it is so amazing but then again you don’t want to tell anyone about it! I found about about these Island through Rachael Dadd I am not sure how I found about her music but commissioned her to make an apron for Ruth whilst she was living in Japan , which is very nice.
Max drove me and the other guest to the station where I got the train back to Kyoto here I visited the Kodai-Ji Temple it was amazing how peaceful it was inside the temple, being so close to the city center. Tomorrow I will head back to Tokyo met up with Cliff again and do some USA planning. I think this is the blog with the most links so far happy clicking.
II have spent the last few days in Tokyo. Doing admin and looking around. I found a good English book shop called Good Day Books. Here I trading in a book I brought for a dollar in the boarders closing down sale in Sydney and got 350 yen towards the other books I brought.
We have also booked our flights to the USA now. The original plan was to go to Portland but due to the flight pricing we have settled for Seattle as it was a lot cheaper and is far close. We plan to do the American Adventure Cycle route the Northern Tier, and end up in New York. Due to time we are going to have to use alternative maybe slightly faster than bikes transport to cover part of the distance in the time we have available.
I am currently on a bullet train (Shinkansen). The only way the front of the bullet train can be describe is ‘Kick Ass’ if trains had fights I am pretty sure this one would beat all the other trains hands down. The ticket system is fairly strange but the ticket barriers are very good. I needed to put two tickets in at the same time and you can just place them on top of each other. The subway ticket machines are equally good and you can put the ticket it anyway and it seems to work.
I am going to Kyoto then heading to a small town called Uno so I can get the ferry to Naoshima which is known as an art island.
I am not sure what I am going to do in Kyoto but I hear there is lots to do.
This afternoon i went to the Manga Museum not because I like Manga I have never really looked at it before but mainly because i have not looked at it before! I also went to a design museum.
Last night we arrived in Tokyo. It was hot and very sunny on the ride we must have drunk a lot of water and sports drinks. There was also a nice head wind which really hit when you went over any bridges.
On the way we stopped at a space museum. Which had a lot of information on the Japanese space program.
I forgot to mention that the last night in the tent was so hot that I tried to sleep outside which was a lot cooler but then the insects attached so it was inside the hot and airless tent for me!
We met up with Cliff’s father when we arrived parked the bikes showered and had dinner.
Yesterday was Cliff’s birthday and we went to Disneyworld. It was a good day, with the highlights being getting evacuated from the run away mine train, when it broke down. We had to cross over the track and go out of a back entrance. The buffet lunch was also good.
Today I am doing a bit of admin, washing research into the next leg of the trip and what to do for the next week or so in Tokyo.
The film was entertaining enough and had a few good shots of trains etc, and it was free to watch on the ferry. The plot was basic to say the least somebody was moving a train around in a yard jumped off it to chance a point but didn’t make it back on train picked up speed on the mainline and then after a while a new train driver and an old one played by Denzel reversed a train into the back of it, and tried to stop it didn’t really work then the new train driver jumped on a truck made it to the front of the train climbed on and stopped the train, so the name of the film was a lie.
The room we were sleeping in was not that full so it was an alright nights sleep.
The morning film was Knight and Day it was pretty bad so I am not going to review it.
Then it was bath time again before getting off the ferry after an all you can eat buffet curry lunch and salad. You couldn’t complain at the cost of the lunch and the amount of food but it was nothing to write home about, (which I guess in someway I am doing here).
We cycled about 15kms away from the ferry port and found a nice camping spot in a park near a lake this will leave about 100kms in Tokyo tomorrow. This is the last night camping in Japan. Our time cycling here has flown by.
After coffee we left our hosts house and went on our way back to the 7-11 for another bready breakfast.
We now headed on our way to the ferry port. It was very sunny and fairly hot but there was no wind until a head wind came from nowhere.
We found a supermarket to get provisions for the ferry journey it was over night and we wanted to buy some dinner and breakfast. The supermarket was in a shopping mall and there were a lot of people with what looked like small traffic cones shouting things into them. I think they were trying to get people to buy stuff. We brought nothing but food and then paid a visit to Mr doughnut or donut and had a doughnut or donut before heading to the ferry terminal. This was fairly well signed, although there was ferry port east, west and a few wharfs but it was fairly easy.
We got our ferry tickets with easy Cliff’s father kindly booked these for us and we wait for a tiny bit in a line of motorbikes and then we got ushered to the front of the line and wheeled our bikes onto the ferry.
We are sleeping in an economy room, this means that all the futons touch each other and there is not much room to move about, but it will do us fine.
Before the ferry left we had a Grand Bath, this is basically an Onsen on board the ship, it was pretty good and had windows out to sea, well the female one would, we looked back over the port.
After getting clean and changing out of our cycling clothes we started, on our dinner which was a bento box and some greasy treats!
We are going to go to the cinema soon to watch a film with Denzel Washinton and a train, the poster is in Japanese but Cliff thinks it is unstoppable. I might write a little review on my blog tomorrow.
