A good deal of time was spent trying to sort out the bike boxes we need in order to get our bikes back to the UK. There aren't any boxes at the airport. I telephoned a couple of downtown Seattle bike shops but without luck though I did have an excellent conversation about homelessness in America! Homeless people are often on bikes because of the sprawling nature of American cities. And they are not, of course, a priority for developers who see big profits in building the kind of plush homes Bainbridge Island has by the score - it's low density suburbia across a fair part of the island though with some beautiful fragments of old forest and public parks too. Social housing is nowhere, therefore, on the political agenda. This came from a man that supported the record breaking tandem ride across the USA in 10 days back in the 1980s and had some ideas about social housing... Hmm I digress... Anyway we eventually decided to try Amtrak which advertises bike boxes and has a station, of course, in Seattle - but that's for tomorrow's visit to Seattle. We then went down to Bainbridge, the town, shopped at Safeway, ahah pumpkin ale!, and got caught up with a library sale that left us considerably heavier. Guy has a great eye for a book and we are going to have to get rid of some before the flight. Then on to Fletcher Landing - a beauty spot on the west coast and a former centre of entertainment - but that was back in 1869 and shortly after. Now it is a pleasant bit of west facing coast where you can paddle, launch a kayak or paddleboard, or just paddle. In the USA property rights can extend down to the low tide - not a usual thing in the UK - so beach access seems a lot more tricky than in the UK. I wondered why there was no coastal path on San Juan Island - it would be glorious but there's little notion of a path over private land or along the shore. Then we came back to the campground, with the school and commuter rush hour seemingly all around us. The speed limit is 20 or 25 for much of the time and although widely flouted it seems not to have caused the absurd rage that 20mph has produced in Wales. It seems accepted (outside my house) but often inconvenient (outside your house)... I'm now reading Julian Barnes' The Man in the Red Coat at high speed so it doesn't add to our baggage but goes to a US used books stack somewhere... We are still here. Tomorrow a visit to Seattle. The photo is a view across the sea to Seattle - note the huge mountain to the right of Seattle, this is Mount Rainier and at 14399' the highest mountain in Washington State. It's a bit of a worry potentially because it's an active volcano in a populous area of the 'states.