We sat at breakfast and ate everything we could get our hands on (maybe that's where these 10 pounds came back from). We then began to face reality. We realized we may not be able to make the ride back home. We had thought two days of rest would be enough to recover, but we also forgot to factor in not having a car and actually having to use our bikes/walk to get everything we needed. We decided to walk around town a bit before heading back to camp and possibly calling to schedule a ride home for Monday. We walked to the grocery store and bought some pain pills, energy bars and energy drinks. We tried to go to the library so little lady could play and we could possibly just sit down, but of course it was closed. So we headed back to our bikes and began our ride home. I don't know if everything (pain pills, energy bar/drink) just kicked in at the right time but we were back to camp in no time and feeling great!
That ride changed our outlook. We had just ridden twelve miles the day after our 50 mile ride and survived. We started thinking of what our options were. We realized that we didn't have to ride 50 miles in a day, we could try to split the ride home up. We had decided to go low tech on this trip so we had no way of looking up information. We went to the camp office to try to get information, but unfortunately the area we wanted to stop in wasn't in their county. We headed over to the grocery store near camp (3/4 mile away) to get food for dinner and they actually had a phone book (remember those?). We looked up motel and campgrounds in the town that was right in the middle of the worst stretch of unpaved trail. There was a motel, but the grocery store clerk said they rent it out by the week and it's quite shady. The hubs called the campground and they said they were about 1/4 mile from the trail we were riding on and actually gave discounts to cyclist! We quickly reserved Sunday night there and felt excited again.
We went back to camp and made dinner and quickly tried our best to enjoy our last night at this campground. This campground does have a fish hatchery at it which is fun to check our and feed the fish. Little lady liked feeding the fish and this time she didn't try to eat the fish food her self. However, we really didn't enjoy our stay at this park. It was very crowded (I know Labor day weekend, what did we expect?) and the sites were crammed together. The absolute worst though were the people around us. They were so loud! They stayed up until 5am Sunday morning talking and laughing loudly. We were ready to get out of there by Sunday morning after a not so restful night.
Sunday we loaded up and hit the road by 9.30am. We would have liked to have left earlier, but we couldn't pre load the trailers since we were actually using everything we brought. We hit the trail and stopped at the first stop which was right before the unpaved portion. We fueled up on energy drinks and granola bars.
We only ran into one issue on the way to our new campground. The hubs loves a good short cut and had looked over our trail map to try to avoid the grassy trail area in the next town. He discovered a road that he swore would cut off a couple of miles.We hit the road he just had to take and of course it was a dirt road. Not just any dirt road though, a dirt road that consisted of about 7 giant hills. We had to walk our bikes up the last portion of each hill and then fly down hoping that we didn't hit any rocks and wipe out. It was terrifying! I was not happy to say the least. This was the portion of the trip that I was closest to tears. The bumps felt so rough to me and I felt awful for the little lady. She had been sleeping and the bouncing woke her up and she was crying on the downhills. He heard about that for awhile.
Once we were back to the trail we actually had an enjoyable ride to our campsite. There were no other good stops along the way so we had a back up drink and some snacks. We stopped along the trail a few times, but felt pretty good the whole way.
We absolutely loved the campsite we found. It was a bit more money than the previous campsite, but well worth it. They had a really nice playground for little lady, a pool (although we didn't bring suits), laundry (which we definitely needed to do), mini golf, arcade, camp store, and bigger sites with better neighbors. We were in heaven.
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| This is taken from the campgrounds site since we didn't have a memory card in the camera. This is actually our site. There is a mini golf course on the corner and we camped on the other side of it. |
We survived! We managed to ride over 115 miles in four days both pulling at least 40 pounds behind us. I know for real bikers 115 miles in 4 days is no real challenge, but for us occasional riders, this is huge.
I didn't realize how badly I wanted this until we were in so deep. On the journey up when my knee started hurting I was so afraid we would have to call someone to pick me up. I am so glad it was just a slight pain and that I pushed through without damaging my knee.
When we thought we were going to have to throw in the towel before even attempting the ride home, I felt defeated. I was so thankful for the great 6 mile ride back to camp that gave us new light and a new plan.
I honestly believe this is the hardest physical feat I have ever accomplished. On the ride up my husband asked me what is harder, my running or the bike trip. I thought running at first just because I can't endure much with running yet, but once we kept pushing with bikes and I realized I was actually getting close to the point that I just couldn't physically bike anymore it became this bike trip. I have never actually hit the point of not being able to run another step physically. I definitely hit points of struggling to breath and walking a bit, but my legs never give out. The ride home I actually told myself that I would ride until we get home or my legs give out. Thankfully my legs held up and are feeling much stronger.
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