Day 4 biking day

Sunday July 31, 2011

We got up at 5 am again. We are heading to McCormick Creek State Park. We are excited to get there because we will have a 3 day rest. We started the day very tired.We didn't carry much food with us because we knew there was a grocery store near McCormick (turns out it was 5.5 miles away). Nathan's load was a little lighter. We weighted his trailer before we left, with just our gear and the trailer weight, it was 82 pounds. Most days we carried a lot of food, enough for 2 days and 6 people. For those of you who have eaten with us, you know how much Nathan can eat. It was a lot of food.
Leaf and I getting ready for the day.

Everest and Grami having breakfast.

Everest at the camp store/office. He wanted to ring the bell so much, but it was 6:45am, we didn't think the other campers would appreciate it very much.

Bonnie and I took off ahead of Nathan and Everest. The first mile was all dirt, I had to go slow so Aurora would not get bounced around so much. Nathan and Everest took some pictures.

There was a gate to get in and out of the campground. We just went around it. Everest loved pressing the buttons and pretending.

Nathan and Everest caught us quickly.

Good bye Hickory Hills. You were a nice campground, but not on a bike.

I love how cute Leaf looks riding his tag-a-long. Both boys have Burley Piccolo's. If you are in the market for a trail behind bike, it is worth it. We did a lot of research on these before we bought them. Most trail behinds attach to the seat stem, which makes you unstable every time they blink. Burley is the only company that manufactures one that connects to your back wheel (via a moose rack). You can still tell when they move around, but it is much more stable. Burley has 2 models the Kazoo and the Piccolo. The Piccolo has the ability to change gears. We decided on it because we knew the kids would use them until about 7-8 years of age, by then they should know how to change gears well. Everest does well, but we still have to tell him which gear to be in. Leaf just likes to switch gears to hear them change. FYI- Burley doesn't make the tag-a-long bikes right now. Not sure why, but they are prototyping one now. We offered to be test them out, but they didn't take us up on the offer. We found Everest's bike through a bike shop that still had one in stock. Leaf's we found on Craigslist in Chicago.

A rare shot of Nathan and Everest biking. It is rare, because I was rarely in front of them. If I was, we usually just pushed our bikes up a big hill and I was sweating to death and they were pushing so I wouldn't get them riding anyway. Other times, I was only a few feet in front of them, because of Everest (and Nathan's) competitive nature, they would do whatever it took to be first.

Taking a break. Everest went exploring a farm road that lead to a field. Indiana can be very pretty.

Here is an example of some of the roads we were on. We were on back roads to the back roads. We did not pass many cars on most of our trip, which was just fine with us. This was a little bit hard on Aurora, so I had to go slow when the road was broken up.

Taking a break after a steep downhill. We got up to 37 miles an hour!!!!!! I didn't realize we were going that fast. Might have been a little too fast for a 2 year old I know. Nathan's top speed was 42 miles an hour!

Around 2:30 we finally made it to McCormick Creek State Park.We stopped at Pizza Hut for lunch (it was the only restaurant near our path), then we pushed our bikes up a 2 mile hill. It wasn't as steep as I thought it would be, but it was long and hard to maintain any speed, so we walked most of it.

Grami and Aurora are hot, sweaty and tired! We set up the tent and went to the pool to cool off.

We had 3 nights to rest this time and we ALL needed it!