Tuesday we spent biking the Hiawatha Trail. It's the one that Elder Vern P Stanfield talked about in the October General Conference in 2015. It has a 1 1/2 long tunnel to begin with that's absolutely dark. We got through pretty well with the head lamp that Jer borrowed from my Dad in the front and everyone with weaker lights following behind. We went through several tunnels and over many trestle bridges. The trail is 14.7 miles of track that used to be a train line. This year was it's 20th anniversary. I loved all the blurbs along the trail that were talking about the railway line and was very surprised to read a lot about the 1910 fires and how devastating they were. A little ironic to be reading them when there are hundreds of fires over this half of the United States. I have two cousins that live in Spokane, so we were able to meet up with Nate, Meri, Emerson and James as well as Renee, Stephen, Braiden, Maggie, Decker and Freya. They have a bus that will take you back to the beginning of the trailhead and as we got on the driver asked if the kids liked the tunnels or bridges better. All of them said the bridges. We were up high enough that most of the smoke was pretty thin all day which was a blessing and another was that my time of the month was late and I didn't have to worry about it on the bike ride. Tender mercies.
After lunch, Evelyn took a turn in the bike trailer. She wanted to hold my camera, so I looped it around her neck and told her to put the cover down if the trail got too rocky. This one of my Mom is the first one that she took. The next few are all my favorites from her perspective.
Seth and Evelyn took turns behind me. Sometimes it was fun, others it was hard to have a copilot. Seth liked trying to rock back and forth to see what was ahead. He almost took us out completely twice when he jerked really hard. Evelyn was my buddy through the first tunnel. She came up with new lyrics to "Shut up and dance with me." She kept singing, "Getting out of this tunnel is my destiny, ohhhhoh, Shut up and bike with me." She just chatted and chatted every time she was with me.
I took this last one because of the wildflowers. I don't have the picture, but Jer took a picture of my cousin Renee and I chatting while we biked. I also really liked seeing Sam and my Dad chatting as they went. I really like my new bike. I can sit up easily and my hands don't fall asleep. That was the main problem with the bike that I used all through my teenage years and the Germany 100k that I did with Janelle and my Ladwig cousins. I got it last year for Mother's Day and then didn't really get to use it until recovering from this year's surgery. It's a slightly downhill ride, so I thought it was going to be fairly easy and have a couple of coasting spots to rest legs with.... not so much. I pedaled for all except one very short stretch. It wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was harder than I thought it would be. Ada had a good strategy though. She was faster than Jer and I so she would get ahead to a shady spot and then rest in the shade until we caught up with her.
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