Olympic National Park would otherwise have been difficult to get to. It has the usual mountains, rivers, lakes and waterfalls. It also has a rainforest - a temperate one as opposed to a tropical one; a forest like the ones that would have one time covered parts of Ireland and Scotland. It is basically untouched, so lots of moss and lots of rotting dead trees. Because it is a rainforest it is damp, very damp and is therefore not a fire hazard.
We also managed a hike elsewhere in the National Park - shorter than the one we did in Waterton Lakes National Park, so we weren't puffed out afterwards. Highlight of this was coming almost literally (<10m) face to face with a mountain lion. Mountain lion sounds better than cougar. Having watched us watching it for a while, it got bored and walked off. We weren't sure whether hymn singing would have helped in this instance.
The end is very close now but we managed to squeeze another little ferry in on the way back to Vancouver. This ferry left from Port Townsend which was the port where the prospectors left trying to get to Canada for the Dawson City gold rush. One way or another we seem to have followed a lot of their trail.
Vancouver, for us, is all about getting the bike ready and our packing to return home by plane. We have accumulated a few things on the trip and, as our packing is tight, and we don't want to wear all our motorcycle gear on a nine and a half hour flight in a small seat, some stuff has to go back with the bike. But not stuff that could go mouldy as the bike could take a while, a long while, to get home. With the bike handed over to the freight agent, we still managed to see a bit of Vancouver but it all felt a bit weird. So might Blackheath...
Some numbers:
56,230km or 34,940 miles ridden in the Americas. If you count the 60 miles or so of us taking the bike to Motofreight in the UK, that will top the 35,000 miles for the trip.
8 falls from the motorcycle. Three in Argentina (two on gravel, one on sand), three in Costa Rica (two on gravel, one in a pothole), one for Paul on his own trying to park the bike in Mexico and one in the USA on a gravel and potholed carpark. And it fell over once due to us unloading it wrongly whilst poorly parked on an incline in Chile.
Visits to Harley-Davidson in Santiago, Medellin, Bogota, Tucson, Seattle, Bozeman (twice), Calgary (twice) and Anchorage. Not forgetting visits to other motorcycle shops: Gonzalo in Montevideo, Bernardo in Montevideo and Salvador in Punta Arenas.
New tyres to set off with, but replaced tyres twice en-route and desperately need new ones now. New rear chain to set off with but replaced twice en-route. Two new fuel pumps and two new batteries. One set of new front brake pads and a new clutch assembly. Some dents in the panniers...
Over 7,350 photos kept - many, many more taken and then deleted. How will we ever make photobooks...
78 blog posts.
344 nights we haven't slept in our own bed.
207 different accommodations of all levels of comfort and style.
16 different countries. Plus an afternoon in Brazil.
35 border crossings with our little Brazil excursion.
Lost one anorak, a Panama hat, two pairs of sunglasses, a cardigan, two buffs and a small rucksack. Replaced, wore out and broke a few more items too.
An incalculable number of memories.
And all this on an inherently unstable vehicle.
