North Idaho Bucket List: Ride the Hiawatha

There was one thing that I REALLY wanted to do before we left Idaho:

RIDE THE HIAWATHA!!

The Hiawatha Trail is a roughly 15 mile gravel/dirt trail through the mountains of Idaho/Montana.  There is a VERY slight downhill grade, but not enough to just coast the whole way down.  It was such a fun experience and I'm so glad we did it.

D and I took a day off from packing to take M up to ride in the Burley trailer with us, while grandparents watched baby J.  We started riding around 9:45 am and I'm really glad we didn't start any later because it got warm and it took us quite a while to finish!

The first 1.5 miles pass through an old railway tunnel.  We knew this, and friends told us to bring flashlights/headlamps and wear a sweatshirt, but man, even with that knowledge I was still surprised at how dark/cold/unsettling it is to ride a bike for 10 minutes in pitch black!

D and I each had 1 headlamp on and M had a flashlight in the trailer.  If I did it again, I would bring even more lights because I could really only see about 5 feet in front of me!  The folks who went through before us had flashing rear lights, so I tried to focus on following them while not freezing my fingers off.  Wear gloves if you go!  I had a sweatshirt, but that wasn't enough so I was frozen by the time we popped out the other side.

The rest of the ride was gorgeous.  We stopped for photo ops and snack breaks.  M did great until we had about 5 miles left to go - by that point he was tired of the bike trailer and the trail was fairly bumpy, so he had enough.  We made it to the end though, without any major fits, and he LOVED riding the big school bus back to the top of the trail.

The bus ride was probably the scariest part of the trip for me because there are no guardrails along the road back up the mountains, and people on ATVs were driving crazy out there.  Dude, what's the rush?  I was having some mom-heart palpitations for sure.

At the end, you ride back through the 1.5 mile tunnel again, and it got really exciting for us because D's crank fell off of his bike midway through the tunnel!  So there we were, standing there in near darkness as he put it back on.  It was comical, and he was able to fix it enough to get almost out the tunnel, so we only had to walk about a quarter mile in the dark.

It was super fun and I'm so thankful that we had the opportunity to #ridethehiawatha!  

Suburban Bike Safety

One of the things I love the most about our small town is its bike-friendliness.  We can bike from "the suburbs" to downtown, and even to the Washington state line (and from there into Spokane - I've also noticed a bike lane at the airport!) all on paved biking trails that are separate from the road.

Biker Gang of 2

Our town seems like a bike-friendly community, and there are efforts to increase awareness of bikes on the roads (like this group) and to encourage bike usage.

I try to designate a few days each week as my "car-free" days - so long as its not too icy or snowy out.  When I'm biking, I am nearly always pulling my toddler in our bike trailer, and thankfully, he loves to ride along and see the world this way.  I love the extra exercise, time outside and time away from my car.  It is a win-win-win!

No selfies while biking.

Recently, we tried something new and biked to a different library than the one we usually frequent.  This required us to cross a 4 lane divided highway, that is basically the main thoroughfare running north out of town.  It has sidewalks and crosswalks and crossing signs.  We obeyed them all as we crossed, but the timing of the signs required us to hang out on the sidewalk in the median for about 5 minutes, waiting to cross the second half of the street, before we could get back on the north/south bike path.

Biking the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes - no cars to worry about!

The median was just barely wide enough to fit both my bike and trailer without either part hanging out into the busy traffic.  I kept watching all of the traffic.  But I have seen one accident at this same intersection where one of the vehicles spun out of control towards the sidewalk. 

Recalling this accident made me second-guess my decision to bike this way.  Had an accident occurred while we were waiting in the median, we would have been lame ducks, unable to move out of the way quickly enough.

So....I'm probably not going to bike to this library again.  As much as I enjoyed it, it is not worth the risk.  My husband and I were talking about it, and it would be so awesome if there was a bike overpass (or tunnel?) at this intersection.  There are literally hundreds of homes located on the west side of the highway, but the north/south bike path is on the east side of the road.  So is the Farmer's Market.  So, you really can't access the bike path without crossing the big highway.

Making roadways safer is good for drivers and bikers, and might encourage more folks to bike around town.  I hope there are continued efforts to improve bikeability in CDA!   

Running & Biking - Heyburn State Park

Good morning!  How was your weekend?

Ours was great.  I got to run 8 miles on Saturday morning!  They felt fine, but I am still S.L.O.W.  But it was a beautiful morning to be out there.

Here is a little bit of what else we have been up to:

We recently drove down to Heyburn State Park to ride bikes on The Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes.  The trail is awesome, we only covered about ten miles (it is over 70 miles long!!), but it is a nice, gorgeous ride along the lake shore.

We crossed over this neat bridge towards the beginning of our ride.  M loved all of the "bumpy spots" and it was very picturesque!

We really had no idea about how heavily the area has been polluted by years and years of mining operations, however.  The trail itself is safe, but the brochure had lots of warnings about not playing/walking alongside the shoreline off of the trail, I think because of lead residue present in the sediment.  That's too bad, because it is lovely!

We had a great bike ride, and I'm excited to go back and ride further!  Check it out, y'all!

Tell me about your favorite biking spots!

Does your toddler like to ride in the bike trailer? Thankfully, M does!

Quick Takes: Scenes from Our Week

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 About as close as he wanted to get to the moose and "biiiiig beah!!!" (as he called it).

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My friend loaned me this.  With more travels coming up, we won't be starting this too soon, but I thought it better to be prepared!

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My aunt brought this to the beach house, and I was thrilled to find it at Target!  Yum!

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Ironman is this weekend!  I am so impressed by all of the athletes.  We checked out the village on Thursday and played at City Park.  Good luck to all of the competitors!

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USA v. Germany was on the big screen at the Ironman Village!

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M looks a little dazed and confused after our 45 minute bike ride (cross training!).  This is what happens when he refuses to nap in his bed - he passed out in the bike trailer!

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We had an epic spill of olive oil in our pantry (M likes to hide in there now?!) so I cleaned and 'reorganized' it.  Really, I just moved most of the stuff higher, which I guess I will keep doing as he keeps getting taller!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Weekend Adventures/Fall in the Inland Northwest!

Weekends are the best!

The view near where Lake CdA feeds into the Spokane River

 We had a such a great relaxing weekend.  M and I went for a short and easy stroller run on Saturday morning.  It was gorgeous out, and we got side-tracked checking out the neighborhood garage sales, but it was really nice to get him out into the fresh air.

Nice paved trails in our area

Later we went over to Spokane Valley so we could go to Hobby Lobby.  I am looking for some things to finish decorating M's room, but they didn't have what I needed so that was kind of a bummer.  We did pick up Five Guys for dinner, which made up for my failed attempt at retail therapy. =)

On Sunday we went for an awesome family bike ride along the river.  The leaves are starting to change - it seems that we get more yellow/gold than red but it is just lovely.  We didn't make it all the way into downtown, but we stopped for lunch at the Fort Ground Grill.  The food was fine but nothing special, but it had a nice casual atmosphere that is appealing to us.  Plus, M and I enjoyed watching football on the TV (since we never get to do that at home, ha!).

M fell asleep in the trailer on the way home, poor little guy couldn't make it all the way home before naptime took over.  We went to the Sunday night service at our church.  We have never been to it before, but they play contemporary-style music which reminded me of my Agape (pre-Catholic) days back in college!  Poor M was falling apart by this time though because it was too close to bedtime and he had such a short nap, so we probably won't be attending this service all that often - the 10:30 usually works much better in this stage of life!

Prince Charming.  At Church he is getting very good at loudly proclaiming "AMEN!" whenever he feels like it!

Riding through the North Idaho College campus

How was your weekend?  Does my weekend sound incredibly boring?  Who cares, I loved it!

The Burley Doesn't Tip Over!

Burley is attached to Dan's hybrid and my hybrid is next to his - this is from a different trip without any falling! =)

 

 I learned this lesson the hard way.....

Thursday for my cross-training I decided to try to ride my road bike while pulling M in our Burley bike trailer.  I really haven't been riding my road bike regularly, but I thought it would be easier/more comfortable to pull him with that rather than on my bulkier hybrid bike.

I headed off in a new direction thinking that it would be flatter than our usual route...boy was I wrong!  I hadn't gotten too far down the path before I encountered an unexpected steep incline, ran out of gas while attempting to climb it, and then I couldn't unclip from my pedals before I tipped over in slow motion --> CRASH!

M was fine, totally unfazed, merely looking at me like I was crazy and practically laughing like it was funny.  I wasn't hurt at all, just embarrassed at falling in such a spectacularly ridiculous fashion.  And I was relieved to find out that M's trailer doesn't tip over at all when I go flying!  It is a beast and I love it.

Of course I changed directions, headed back in our usual route (which actually was flatter!) and we were able to stop to play at the park in the middle of our bike ride.  M had a meltdown on the way back home (he didn't want to leave the park) so I got to tow a screaming 1 year old the whole way home.  We were quite a pair, and I know we gave a good laugh to a couple of old folks getting their morning walk on.

Hope you are having a great weekend, and getting a smile at our silly antics in north Idaho!