Day 1 - Vancouver, BC to Birch Bay, WA

The trip officially got underway today with a 59 mile ride from Vancouver to Birch Bay State Park.  I left the hotel around 8am, grabbed my final Tim Hortons meal of the trip, and biked the 3 miles to the official starting point shown on my map. After that today was all about wrong turns and correcting them. Cycling through big cities is exciting, but following directions with frequent turns is difficult to do without stopping too often.  There was also a detour with very poor signage for the bridge pictured below that I wasted a nice chunk of time chasing down.  Arriving at the border around 2pm I attempted to ride through the vehicle checkpoint, but was ushered to the pedestrian pass through which meant having to park the bike, go inside, and wait 20 minutes for them to have an available agent to check my passport. All good - they were friendly and let me grab a selfie before riding back into the USA.  Here in Birch Bay I was expecting hiker/biker campsites, but the self-checkin signs stated the cheapest site was $25. I tried calling the number that was posted to ask about the $12 dollar sites I saw online but the number was disconnected. As a result, I grabbed a $35 site and slipped $15 into the envelop. The park is virtually empty so hopefully nothing will backfire there.