A bit of a back story that tells how long this idea has sort of been in the works: Between the time of our engagement (7.9.07) and the time of our wedding (9.20.08) my husband and I got a little into biking. We didn't do anything to special, but we loaded our bikes onto our car about once a week and went for a short ride on some trails. We also pimped our rides, but that's a different story. My husband told me during this time that he had always wanted to just take off on his bike and carry everything he would need to a campground and camp like that. I thought it sounded fun, but honestly never really saw it happening and didn't put much more thought into it.
My husband is of a different breed though and once he gets an idea in his head, it stays there. Sometimes it gets tossed to the back, but it is still there. During the talks of this bike camping trip, he actually built a trailer out of scrap steel, wire, and odd wheels (not positive what it's made out of). It sat under our deck at our old apartment waiting for the day this adventure would happen. It didn't happen while we finished our time in the apartment and some how it got loaded up and moved into our house back in May of 2010. Since then it has sat alone on a cement slab behind our garage. I think it stared hubby down every time he saw.
I can only assume that hubby saw my new found hobby of running and loving the outdoors as the time to finally attempt this bike adventure. He brought the idea up in the middle of this summer and I hesitated to answer. Things are a bit different now with a child and I wasn't sure how she would fit in with this whole biking adventure. He basically said, "Man up, if we are ever going to do this thing now is the time." Maybe not quite that, but it was implied. We discussed that I could pull little lady and he would pull the trailer with all of our gear. And so our biking adventure was born.
There is a trail about a half mile from our house and heads north for about 90 miles. Originally we thought this trail was paved the entire distance from Grand Rapids to Cadillac. As we researched, we discovered that there were portions that were unpaved. The trail is on an old railroad line so it's relatively flat, so we didn't think it would be to bad. We were wrong, but I will get to that.
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| This is the only picture of the adventure. We brought our camera, but forgot to put the memory card in it. Here we are posing at the start. |
We left on a Friday morning at about 8AM. Hubby was pulling his trailer which held our tent, a pack and play, sleeping bags and a Styrofoam cooler with his clothes and odds and ends in it. I pulled the baby bike trailer with little lady and her blankets and our overnight bags in the back of the trailer. We made great time getting to our first stop. In fact, I don't think we even stopped in the first city we passed. (The gas station in that city was about a block from the trail and I wanted to add as few extra miles to this trip as possible).
We stopped at the next city, they had a gas station right off the trail. We ate a granola bar for breakfast and bought some cold water. We didn't bring water with us, other than a full bottle on each bike because we wanted to keep the weight we were pulling down. We rested for a few minutes and then took off. Here is where hell began. We thought we had at least five more miles of amazing paved trail. Not so much. It ended here and it got ugly. We had pictured a solid gravel trail for our riding enjoyment, but at this portion of unpaved trail the Amish (I assume) had been using as their horse and carriage trail. The center of the trail was all torn up from horse hooves and the sides had deep ruts from the carriage wheels. It was a challenge pulling through there. The challenge was made even greater when the hubby's homemade trailer needed some attention and his used bike kept slipping out of gear. We had to stop about every 5 minutes to fix something. At one point while working on the bike the actual couple with the horse and carriage passed us. We were very irritated. (Not anything against the Amish or people that would use a horse and carriage, but this trail actually has signs everywhere prohibiting the use of cars/motorized vehicles and horses on this trail and they were totally tearing it up and I am not even mentioning the presents the horses were leaving on the trail.)
When we got to the next stop we took another break. The pavement had started back up just before this town and we couldn't have been happier to see it. We thought we had another few miles of paved trail after this town. We rested, had a snack and just let little lady run around. This was about the half way point. If we continued past this point there was no point in turning around. We would have to make it to the campground (or look lame and call his dad to pick us up). When we felt ready we hit the trail again.
The paved portion quickly left us just as we passed town. This portion of the trip seemed the hardest on hubby. His bike was not doing well and I think failing was becoming an option in his head. I tried to be his personal cheerleader the whole 7? miles to the next town. We actually took breaks on the trail at the portion and at one point where the trail became quite loose we walked our bikes for a few minutes. We were actually pedaling as fast as we could and barely keeping the bikes upright so walking didn't seem like such a bad idea. This was the first stretch that we actually stopped to rest on the trail itself. We had stopped before to work on the bike, but now we were actually stopping to rest, stretch and drink water. At some point during this stretch hubby managed to fix his bike a bit better too. When we finally got to the next town we stopped for lunch. I think hubby was starting to doubt this whole thing here. We were at this stop forever! Eventually we decided it was time to keep moving. We had made great time on the first 15 miles of the trip, but the second 15 miles took us about 3 hours. Not good. Our dreams of possibly finishing this 50 mile trip in 6 hours were gone.
I hit a wall on the next stretch of trail. Thankfully the hubby was feeling good so he cheered me on (It seemed to work like that most of the trip. When one of us was up, the other was down. We could help cheer each other on.) I think I just couldn't handle the messed up trail anymore. Plus, I was starting to feel an aching in my knees. I had knee pain before, but have not had much knee pain since I started running so I sort of figured the pain was just from being overweight. I started to think maybe something was horribly wrong with my knee on this portion of trail. I pushed through though because really what else could I do. As we neared the next town the trail turned to just grass. Awesome! I guess the one good part about the trail at this point was that it seemed the horse buggy didn't go this far north. When we got to the actual town there really wasn't much to see. We sat on a corner and had some water. Hubs looked at the map and decided we would ride on their actual roads for about 2 miles and then get back on the trail. I thought it sounded great to ride on pavement and not grass. Although I was super afraid we would lose the trail and have to ride way out of our way.
We quickly got back on the trail since we were both excited that at the next town we would hit pavement again and have it for the last 5/6 mile stretch to camp! Nothing eventful happened on this portion of trail. I think we were just counting down the miles until pavement appeared. I think we both almost teared up when we saw it. It was the most beautiful piece of cement we had ever seen. Just after the trail became paved there was an Arby's so we stopped for dinner and to rejoice that we would actually finish this trip out. I swear the sandwich I had right then and there was the most delicious thing I have ever put in my mouth. I was so hungry and happy.
We rode the last part out and felt like champs pulling into the campground! Somehow little lady was covered in dirt. She got her first shower at a campground. She does not like showers. Neither of us enjoyed that attempt at a shower. It definitely felt good to get some of the dirt of though.
We spent that evening feeling like champs and talking about how great we felt and how we could totally ride home. The next morning was a different feel though.
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