Mile 361: Interview with Crystal Frenette

I’m a little behind on the videos, and my own mileage is considerably further than 361 miles.
After this past weekend, I’m now at 458 miles!

My bicycle journey this past weekend was the idea of my adventurous girlfriend Amber who had wanted to revisit the Olympic Hot Springs south of Port Angeles on the peninsula.

On Friday evening, I rode north from south Whidbey island to Keystone near Coupeville and crossed the ferry to Port Townsend, a great Victorian sea town. I ended the night in my bivy sack at Sequim State Park several hours later.

The morning at the park was beautiful, and so were the next 20 odd miles on the Olympic Discovery Trail through Sequim and winding through forests and down into river gorges until I rendezvoused with Amber and her car just outside Port Angeles.

Together, we drove to the trailhead where she got out her bike and panniers, and we set off up 8 miles and 1800ft of gain of washed out roads (and some tricky bike hiking on gnarly trails) to the “old” trailhead. There, we stashed the bikes and hiked the final two miles into camp, and enjoyed a good hot soak in the pools!

The next day, we reversed course, bombed down the hill, and celebrated with some particularly good beer in Port Townsend. One ferry, some restaurant macaroni and cheese, and 25 miles later, and I was at home.

It was a great hike and bike tour with a great lady! She’s a real trooper!

Speaking of bike adventures, in 2015 we were just north of Avola, BC, when we spotted some other folks bike touring in the opposite direction. It was mile 361. They were the first cyclists we had seen for a long time, we were in such a hurry to say hello that we ran into each other and created a pile of bicycles on the side of the road before running off to get their attention.

It was a family with two parents and two kids who were touring from Saskatchewan heading west. When Crystal Frenette heard we were headed to Fort McMurray and the tar sands, she got excited, because she and her daughter had been there two years earlier. As we interviewed her, she treated us to the story of her experience with the tar sands, pipelines, and the Healing Gathering.

Much of what she told us there on the side of the road was a detailed preview of what we would find up north, the place we would stay, and a hint at the people we would meet.