ANACORTES AND GUEMES ISLAND — AND A NEW TOY 🙄

As I continue with a struggle to return to enjoying my bike riding, Susan continues to try to help me with the struggle. Miss gadget queen got us each a new toy — once she saw how good it would be for me, she needed one too.

Rather than keep the Garmin display part of it (the expensive part that had much more to it than I/we needed or would ever use), we now have only this Rearvue part that, attached to the rear of your seat post, indicates when there is a vehicle approaching from behind. Susan researched and played around with it enough to find that we could connect the Rearvue to the Ride With GPS app that we have on our iPhones, returning the Garmin display. One less geeky item to have attached to our handlebars. I find that it works quite well as it beeps when something is approaching, and shows an icon of a vehicle along the side of the map on the phone. We are both hopeful it will be a great help in my feeling of safety and in regaining my confidence.

On to our adventure.

This past January we had taken a brief camping trip to Anacortes (you can find that under January 2026) and have talked about returning to include a ride around Guemes Island. Finally the time has come. Our time here will be shortened as Susan has a PT visit on Tuesday; we arrived yesterday, Sunday and will stay either one or two nights, but are considering one night.

Once set up at our campsite we took a little bike ride into town and found the Dockside Dog at its new location. It is right in town directly across the street from Gere Deli where many cyclists, us included, stop for lunch when riding around Anacortes.

It’s nice enough, and still has the same owner, who remembered us from his other location, but it is just not the same as stopping along the trail for a dog.

Anacortes has murals that are kind of three dimensional that are quite interesting. I try to get a photo of some but they don’t really show them well. But this one was near the Dogs place so I tried again.

After having our hotdog lunch at the outdoor table, we continued on. We rode our usual route along the Tommy Thompson trail and across the bridge to turn around at the end and return. I likely would have chosen to add the March Point loop before the return but Susan was not up for that.

Our selfie of the bridge, as bad as it is of me.

The times I have ridden the bridge, the tide has not been out as much as it was on this day. Blue sky and sunshine too.

We have seen the harbor seals on several of our bridge crossings, but this was the best they have posed for a photo.

While Susan made a stop on our return across the bridge to text photos to the girls, I waited for her at the totem pole.

Back onto the trail and heading for the campsite, Susan soon took us off trail to ride the quiet back road through the marina along the bay. We rounded the corner by the Harbor office to find these life size games, but did not play.

From here we wanted to check out the ride from our campsite to the ferry landing for our Guemes Island adventure. Again, Susan used her mapping device to explore more streets in Anacortes rather than follow the given map. It created more of an adventure.

We saw giraffes…

We saw flocks of perched cormorants …

We stopped for ice cream…

Making our U turn at the ferry landing and heading to camp, who could resist this stop??

If it’s good enough for Sasquatch, it’s good enough for me.

We ate our hot fudge sundaes sitting on a bench near our bikes, and I could enjoy seeing another hopscotch course. Always fun to see.

Crossing the road brought us to the old train station which is now the site of the Farmer’s Market held on Saturdays. I tried again for those 3D murals.

A little history of the train station.

Now..

As I reconcile myself to accept that if I do local rides with Susan they will be about 10-12 miles long, I also know they will adventurous. Short rides remain good for me at this time, and I like taking my time to explore an area. Susan is a great explorer!