We have arrived at Bainbridge 20 years, minus one day, after first arriving here in the very first transam in 2004. I can't say that I remember it very accurately - I think the layout of the campground was different then. The island has plenty of hilly roads, going mostly in quite straight lines over the island. To get here from Fort Casey wad easy enough. The ferry from Fort Casey to Port Townsend started our day (8.45am sailing). Then we slowed down because Port Townsend is an attractive town with an old Rothschild family house that would be nice to visit (but closed) with a garden full of herbs, especially lavender (see photo) that looked out over the sea and was open. The Maritime Center was full of posters from the last 46 years of the Wooden Boats Festival, touristy stuff, sailing books (thank goodness for the weight limit on the plane!), team rowing boats of a very high spec, works of art and science - as in the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Sufficient, we pushed on to Safeway and ate cakes. Then took the 20 out of town, though it is not a bike friendly road and has merely a rather gritty and dirty hard shoulder. We then reached Port Ludlow via a pleasant coastal road - getting away from the traffic. Then onto the 104 through to the floating bridge that goes across Hood Canal (it's a lake not a canal but it is long and straight for a very long way) - at which point we were on the 104 with gazillions of vehicles... we noticed a touring cyclist with camping gear and no shirt on heading nonchalantly in the wrong direction for his side of the road... seem blissfully insulated from the hurtling traffic heading the other way. A cyclist is, to be fair, in a difficult position - traffic is sometimes so dense that getting to the other side of the road is not really possibl and it was very dense at this point. And road rules that were written with only big motorised vehicles on mind (most one way streets in the entire globe).
Anyway we pushed on to Fort Gamble which is an historic village - lots of original buildings, but also dahlias. I've rather missed my garden (where dahlias struggle with slugs) and National Trust gardens where dahlias flourish in huge displays. See the photo. Then on to the Native American reservation at Squamish (shopped for dinner) and then finally onto Bainbridge Island via the raucous awfulness of the 305 (crossing a bridge with no overtaking space and heaps of cars behind us). Soon we turned off for the campground at Fay Bainbridge and arrived. Hiker-biker sites - and all of them empty though the other sites were full. America thinks that cycling is a great idea but much too sweaty, exhausting and dangerous to do, the UK is on a similar path and the advent of electric bikes has made surprisingly little difference. We benefit from this by finding empty hiker/biker spaces.... We are here. The photo of the ship is the tale of the tree of heaven, sent to Seattle in gratitude for kindness to a Chinese merchants son, that due to a storm ended up in Port Townsend - only one tree then reaching Seattle.