Washington Rails: Rails-to-Trails Over the Border
On the first weekend in June Gili and I headed to Washington State. We had just bought a new (used) car the previous week and it was time to start using it. It was also sunny and quite warm which is always an advantage. We headed to the border early Saturday morning and crossed with almost no waits. We drove to a town called Sedro-Woolley and started to ride from there along the Cascade Trail till another town by the name of Concrete. What we discovered is that this trail is very popular and gets a lot of use from the local community for cycling, hiking and mainly dog walking.
It was pretty obvious that we reached Concrete as they have a huge concrete wall there with the sign “Welcome to Concrete”. Apparently the sign was just put on when a movie was filmed there in the early 90’s by the name “This Boy’s Life” starring the young Leonardo DiCaprio. We found a shady spot in Concrete and collapsed for a while. It was around 28c and we were not used to the heat. We had lunch, took a nap and bought ourselves ice cream in the local supermarket. Then we turned around and rode back. We returned to our car and found a campground in Sedro-Woolley where we spent the night. On the next day we drove to a town named Duvall and rode along the Snoqualmie Valley Trail (another rail-trail) over there. The biggest discovery of this trip was to find out that Bellingham actually has a lively downtown area with some Mexican places and an excellent local ice cream shop (Mallard Ice Cream).
