Checking out the Stuff and NZ Herald sites, we know that the weather in NZ is pretty foul - the biggest storm since the 1968 Wahine Storm? 30,000 homes in Wellington without electricity... lots of snow in the South Island. Thinking of you all - and envious of the ability to turn on the heaters and fires.
We were warned that June is not necessarily a great time to go cycle touring in Washington State, and that there is quite a bit of rain at this time of the year. But, given the constraints of the University year, this is the only time that we have to do the trip. We figured - whats a bit of rain in summer, we have ridden in summer before, as long as it is warm, it is not a problem.
BUT, when you get a cold head wind, rain on top of a night of little sleep, the 35km trip that we did seems like 500km. We ended up putting on our thermal underwear as we were riding (on a beautiful trail on Vancouver Island from Sidney toVictoria), all our wet weather gear - and when we got to our hotel we were so exhausted we collapsed onto the bed and both promptly feel asleep for a couple of hours.
Heading out this morning, to Port Angeles, the gateway from the north to the Olympic National Park, we can see the peninsula from our hotel room (across the straight) and the clouds are down to sea level, wind is blowing and our top temperature is going to be 13 degrees celsius. Yesterday we were riding in 12 degrees, plus wind chill factor. So we have already got out our warm clothing. Today we start with a 90 min ferry ride and then a 50km ride pretty much uphill. The weather is supposed to clear at about 4pm when we get to the camp - which will be nice.
Sadly, the weather forecast is for one nice day then rain and cold again, but it does change hourly, so we will press on. We have already made once concession to the weather and booked accommodation (instead of camping) on Monday night next week, then we will see what happens after that.
So, instead of weather, what else have we discovered? Caterpillars (arrggghh), lime kilns, and an incredibly successful arbitration.
Caterpillars - there are these furry little caterpillars in this part of the world that turn into little grey moths (they would be more bearable if they turned into pretty butterflies). and they can be everywhere. Unfortunately, they were everywhere at our campsite on San Juan Island. It was a beautiful campsite - at Lakeside resort but the caterpillars were everywhere. On the tent, on the table, dropping from the trees, trying to get into our bags.
We think we managed to escape the camp without any caterpillars in our belongings (lots got squashed, some set up a caddis on the tent between the fly and the tent) - but we won't know till tonight when we put the tent up again. They had pretty much eaten all the foliage off the soft leaf trees above the campsite - very annoying.
First night camping not a success, little sleep - getting used to blow up beds, pillows, it was cold and started raining in middle of night (causes worries about packing up in the rain, carrying a wet heavy tent.). Got good sleep last night in hotel, so hopefully we can have a good tenting night tonight - with no caterpillars!
The tent itself is a funny story. When we were at home Peter got out the tent and called me over to question why the base of the tent was so dirty and why there were dead insects all through it. I was s puzzled as he was as we meticulously cleaned the tent before leaving France, and it needs to be clean to get through customs in NZ. We scratched our heads and worked out that neither of us had used the tent since we got home, and just couldn't work it out. As I was looking at the tent I thought 'I can't remember the inside of the tent being yellow', but just put that down to bad memory and getting old. Peter had difficulty remembering how to put the tent up - again, getting old!!!
It wasn
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