I started by replacing my back tyre - 4300 miles has been enough for the rear gatorskin tyre. Today we wanted to see Anacortes, particularly the museum and the Maritime Museum. The museum is situated in the former library, rather an elegant building that the town built with the aid of the Carnegie Foundation. There is a curious but fascinating collection - there's an early music player with metal discs, still working but not today and disguised as a desk, a pedal (pump) organ that made me wish I memorised some organ music since it needs playing occasionally to prevent the leather bellows hardening. There was also a collection of photographs from various local photographers - Anacortes was a fairly down to earth place - logging, canning, fishing - with a lively and warm life. The museum had an old painting of early Anacortes with various sailing and steam ships - the museum lady (just back from Scotland!) pointed out the oddness of just which way the wind was blowing when the painting was done - some smoke blew south and some north.... artistic license but I can imagine Captain Aubrey being upset by such lack of veracity ... The Maritime Museum has a large boat - a 'snagboat' - outside. Snagboats remove snags from the water - logs, tree trunks, etc. It is partly the superstructure of an earlier snagboat so some of the boat goes back well over a hundred years. The crew lived on board, some did this all their working lives, through bitter winter and ice as well as balmy summer days like today. Something of a community it had a cook, captain, engineers, and manual crew, living on the lower deck, to remove 'snags'. It was retired in 1981. It's a remarkable old ship - as you can see from the photo it was powered by steam paddles. On the walls, old photos of ships on once brilliant blue seas, and a treasured memory, half faded, and long since retired, dismantled or sunk. We also visited a thrift store to look for books, I visited a bookstore too - for we're rapidly coming to the end of our books. Fanny Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans is read! It is an excellent book for a transam cyclist from the UK. Things have moved on - the USA was very new and raw when she visited in 1831 - and still very sensitive to British criticism. But much of what she says has still some significance for today - if anything the UK has become much like the US - we have trodden the same path towards SUVs and our politics has an unfortunate tinge of presidential style, and our UK roads threaten an inhospitality to bikes, horses, pedestrians that's commonplace in the USA. The US has the huge problem of a lifestyle that is much further from carbon neutrality than even the UK, and any change will be deeply resented and used by populists and petroleum interests - more so than in the UK. Mrs Trollope thought women's greater involvement in public life would help the US - and would have been delighted by the prospect of a woman president, it's taken rather too long though and we may yet, sadly, be stuck with tromperie (fr. deception). We finished the day eating spring rolls with Founder's Porter beer back at the tent. My back tyre seems to be going flat... We plan to visit Deception Pass State Park for a few days from tomorrow so first thing the bike tyre will need fixing. We are still here.