Our little vacation started off very well: when we were parked in the street to load our stuff in the car, we got 2 parking tickets! The first one for being parked with the front of the car facing the wrong way and the other because all our wheel were straight. We were parked on a hill and apparantly that wasn’t allowed over there. But how were we supposed to know that? It was an expensive day; $ 58,- per ticket! That sucked!

But we were happy with our car; a Ford Edge, a 4WD. A nice and spacy car so our bikes fit very nicely and we still had plenty of space for our bags. Such luxury, now we didn’t have to fold/roll everything up in the mornings and put it exactly in its designated space. We could just put everything in the car.

That afternoon we drove to Lake Tahoe, a beautiful and big lake in the Sierra Nevada, and camped between the trees close to the lake. The scenery over there is mountainous and there’s endless pineforests.

The next day we drove the road alongside the lake. It went up pretty high, so we had a beautiful view on the blue water and the mountains surrouding it. We camped somewhere on a campground in a forest and then continued to Lassen National Park.

Lassen National Park is another one of those stunning National Parks. Snowy mountains, endless pineforests, thermal activity with boiling mud (and the stench of rotten egs) and little lakes. It’s still early in the season and a large part of the park is still closed due to snow so we could only see a small part of it. But we definitely want to come back again to explore more of the backcountry.

Crater Lake National Park was the next park on our list and route. This park also had just opened for the season and was only partly accessible due to the snow. Normally, everything doesn’t open till mid June, but fortunately we could camp and drive part (west) of the rim drive. There was still a lot of snow on the campground, so that was pretty neat.

Crater Lake was formed because a huge eruption about 7700 years ago caused the top of a big volcano to crash into the earth. The whole peak vanished into the earth and left a big hole. That hole filled with snowmelt and rain during many years, which caused the lake to form. The water is so clear that you can see dozens of feet under the surface and so clean that no pollution has been found. Because it’s so clear and clean, the color is a striking and deep blue.

It really is a beautiful lake in a stunning scenery. The road is above the lake so you look down at the water. It’s surrounded by mountains and rocks. Because there was still so much snow, it was like we were on snowboarding vacation. The air even felt and smelled the same.

The last park on our route was Olympic National Park, close to Seattle. We didn’t really go inside the park because we didn’t have enough time, but we drove around it. So we were able to see a bit of the famous Oregon and Washington coast and again, many hills and mountains. The next day we drove to Seattle where we’re (again) staying with people we met along the way. A very long time ago, on the Carretera Austral in Chile during our only rainy day over there. They showed us the city, by bike of course, and we had enough time to prepare a little for the next part of our trip; Alaska. A lot of people cycle in Seattle and we found out that it’s obligated to wear a helmet in the city. The first day we cycled without a helmet, but because we didn’t want another stupid ticket we decided to wear them the next day. For the first time during this whole trip, we wore our helmets. And not even on a dangerous descent, but only in the city jungle….

Many fishermen are from Seattle and therefor there are many fishing vessels in the harbors of Seattle, also for maintenance. For the people who have ever seen the Discovery program ‘Deadliest Catch’; many of those fishermen are from Seattle. In 1 of the harbors there’s a memorial for all fishermen that have died, either at sea or in any other way. On the plaque, there’s also the name of Phil Harris, the captain of one of the vessels on Deadliest Catch, who died after a short illness.

Our short vacation is now over again. We returned the car and are in Seatlle now. We’ve seen beautiful nature again and it was a nice preparation for Alaska. We saw a lot of forest and snowy mountains and the nights were pretty cold. Hopefully the weather also is a nice preparation for Alaska; it was beautiful, sunny and nice and warm.

Now we have to get back on our bikes to get to Bellingham, which is about 175 kms/ 110 miles. We have to be able to easily do that in 2 days. There we board the ferry to Skagway with a stop in Juneau. Then, the adventure really starts (again).

Depending on the weather, we’ll stay in Juneau for a couple of days to have a look around there. Then we’ll take another ferry to Skagway and there we’ll really get back on our bikes to