More Bikey Fun with Family

The other day I was sitting at home, minding my own business, when Blaubeere suggested we get together for a bike ride.  Well, not being one to turn down an opportunity to go for a ride with some of my favorite people, I said yes! and we talked about where this bike ride might take place.  We finally settled on my turf because, well, let's be honest; there are some pretty darn okay trails on my turf.

Blaubeere's youngest, Peanut, is just learning to ride a bike on her own and gets pretty anxious about certain aspects of riding on the streets (like coming to a full stop, carefully looking both ways, and waiting for a biiiiig hole before proceeding) so we wanted to pick our route carefully.  We also needed to keep Peanut's endurance in mind, being a new rider she rides a little slower and not as far as the rest of us.

We settled on a route that is off-road trail all but the last few blocks, a ride of 2.7 miles there and then back the same way.

So we drove to the beginning and lined up for the customary "beginning of the ride" photo.  I had meant to bring my camera and tripod for this picture but I forgot so we had to improvise and do a "selfie".  I ended up doing the selfie and I'm not all that good at it - I end up concentrating on getting everyone in the picture, centered, and the background right, to the point that I frequently forget to smile.  Yeah, that's what happened.  But it turned out well enough.  We got our picture and then we were off through the forest!

This is actually one of my favorites stretches of trail around here.  I end up on it quite a bit every summer.  Its quiet, its pretty, its not too strenuous, and just a genuinely nice ride.

So we rode through the woods, stopping for an occasional water break.  It was a good time.

A few weeks ago we had a pretty serious storm come through the area and thousands of trees were damaged.  This trail was closed for a couple of weeks while they cleared and cleaned and got it back into shape.

We saw plenty of damage as we rode along.  Not only were trees knocked down, but portions of the trail had washed out, too, and had to be resurfaced and repaired.

One part of the ride that everyone had fun with was the rumbly bridge we crossed.

Up and over, everyone had fun on that one.

Our destination, our "turn-around point" was, of course, our favorite ice cream place.  Can't do anything with grandpa without some how working ice cream into the equation.  I don't usually have to talk very hard to get here, though, when family comes to visit.  I like that.

There was a train crossing on the trip.  It was clear when we came in but as we were leaving to go back there was a train coming into town, blocking our way back.  When they are leaving town they usually get going pretty fast, picking up speed and clearing out quickly so you don't have to wait long.  But when they're coming into town they can be pretty slow.  This one was coming in so we found a nearby playground to pass the time.  Fortunately, we didn't have to wait very long before we were back on our way.

Pretty soon we were on our way back.  The trail was just as pretty going back as it was going in.

The nice thing about this ride was that we just had to follow the trail.  For the most part there were no intersections where you had to know which way to go, just follow the trial.

Little Peanut did really well at peddling along.  She even got to lead the pack for a little ways.  I think she enjoyed that.

And so we rode though the woods, scaring away the wildlife with all our noise, having a grand time.

Not quite five and a half miles later we were back at the cars, happy and just enough tired to know we had fun. A nice thing about riding in the woods is its a little cooler.  When we were out on the streets in the middle of the ride we were noticing that the day had turned out a little warmer than expected but it hadn't really mattered because we'd been in the trees for most of the time.  That was pretty nice.

We're going to have to do this again.  This was a lot of fun!