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!

Saturday July 30, 2011  afternoon

We stopped at Cataract General Store. It is the oldest continuously run general store in Indiana. I think they said since 1860? It was very cool inside. They had all kinds of fun things in the store. It was an antique, general, grocery store.We got a post card on our way to Cataract Falls (1/2 mile away).

Cataract Falls State Park. We had lunch at the upper falls, then biked to the lower falls.

I think this is the upper falls, but I am not sure. There were a bunch of water falls in a row.

It was very hot! The falls were nice, but there was no where for us to get wet. We were all tired, hot and ready to get to our next camp site.

That is until we found the digger. We let the boys play for a while before heading out again.

We biked past the General Store again, but this time we stopped for some cold snacks!

Aurora enjoyed some of Nathan's Klondike bar...

While Leaf and Everest enjoyed Popsicle.

We finally arrived at Hickory Hills campground around 1:30. It is a private campground off a dirt road. We had to bike a mile on hard pack dirt road. It was very difficult. We thought the road would be better once we got to the campground, but it got worse. It was loose pack big gravel, the worst thing on a road bike. The campground was big and everything was on the opposite side from our camp spot. For some reason when we got to the office, they thought we wanted a campsite by the river. Our first site was 1/2 mile downhill, on gravel and dirt, with the closets water tap at the top of the hill...1/2 mile away. Bonnie and I saw it and said "no". It was a nice spot, quiet and semi close to the river. But we were exhausted, dirty, hungry, and tired. We picked another site at the top of the hill, closer to water tap, but still secluded. We were still a mile from the showers, and playground, but only 1/2 mile from the office and "swimming lake". I wish we would have gotten a picture of the "swimming lake". It looks beautiful online, in reality it is a big mud puddle that is about waist deep and who knows what on the bottom. We swam for an hour anyway, we were so dirty and hot, it didn't matter too much.

Having dinner at Hickory Hills.

We went to bed early because we had to get up at 5 am again to bike to McCormick Creek State Park.

Day 2 Our First Biking Day!

Saturday, July 30, 2011

No one slept very well because we were all excited about biking in the morning. Nathan got the least amount of sleep. Around 4am, he heard something outside our tent. At first he thought it was Bonnie, but soon realized it was not her. He slowly unzipped the tent to go see what it was, but the sound of the zipper, woke up Aurora who started to scream. Nathan jumped out of the tent, headlamp ready, turned it on and saw a raccoon jump out of the Burley trailer. Aurora was the one that scared the raccoon, not the zipper. It scared the racoon enough that it ran into Leaf's tag a long bike before it ran into the woods. What was the raccoon doing in the trailer, you ask? Eating the HUGE bag of trail mix I made for the trip. I was bummed. I got all kinds of good things in the mix, Annies bunnies, pretzels, dried fruit, even Trader Joe's gummies. It all had to be thrown away. It taught us a valuable lesson...we hung our food every night. We have always hung our food while camping, but that was in Montana and Utah where bears and mountain lions will get into your stuff. It didn't occur to us to hang it in Indiana.

Here is what is left of my trail mix, you can see where the raccoon shredded the bag.

Everest was up bright and early (5:30am), ready to go.

Our convoy! Nathan took Everest (who is amazingly strong and truly helps out) and the gear. I had Leaf and Aurora with all our clothing and a few odds and ends. Bonnie had the BOB trailer, her gear, my IPAD (the BOB has a dry bag ) and a few extras.

Everest biking, I am directly behind him and Bonnie is in the background.

Leaving Lieber State Recreation Area!

Let the biking begin! When we planned the trip, we accounted for the fact that campgrounds were 2-4 miles from the entrance of the park. What we didn't account for is that some of the campsites are another mile or more from the campground entrance.

This was one of the scariest parts of the trip. We left around 8am on a Saturday in hopes that there would be little traffic. After 4 miles, we found ourselves on a secondary highway with NO shoulder. The speed limit was 55 and cars drove faster. We were only on it for 1.5 miles, but it was all downhill, then back up. The bridge was in the middle and had a small shoulder so we stopped to rest.

It was a beautiful view and we saw a blue heron.

Later in the day, we saw a small turtle on the side of the road. We didn't know until we circled back around, but it had been hit by a car. Its shell was split. That opened up a big can of worms. For the next umpteen miles, we discussed how cars are dangerous and how they can hurt and kill animals and people. It was the first of many dead animal and many questions on our trip.

The boys discussing why the turtle got hit and why it didn't get off the road.

Not long after the turtle sighting, Everest spotted a tiny frog hopping across the road. He was so concerned it would get hit, we had to circle around and help it cross the road safely.

We have many more pictures of this day, but I will post them tomorrow. We took over 1,000 pictures on our trip! Hope you are enjoying reading about and seeing our trip as much as we enjoyed it. Maybe it will inspire you to do something adventurous too.

Day 1 Hanging out at Lieber State Rec Area

Friday, July 29, 2011

The kids (or should I say Everest and Aurora) woke up bright and early a little before the sun rose. They were both dressed and playing as the sun started to shine in the campground.

Everest and Aurora sitting outside the tent.

Getting ready to make breakfast. We took a very small camp stove with us, we cooked everything from eggs, to stir fry to chili.

Doing chores: Everest helped wash dishes.

Leaf helped do laundry. We only took 3 changes of clothing and 1 was a swim suit. Laundry was done in a dry bag everyday.

Leaf helping to rinse out the clothing.

While I went into town to grocery shop (I did not have time to do it before we left), Nathan and Bonnie took the kids to the beach. It is a very nice beach, other than the very big hill you have to go down to get to it. No big deal if you are in a car, but on bikes, it makes a difference.

 

The boys enjoyed running in the water, building in the rocks/sand, and swimming.

After lunch, Nathan and Bonnie drove the truck and the car to our final destination, Brown County State Park. They left the truck there and drove back to Lieber. They were gone about 5 hours. I took the kids to the pool while they were gone. For all those in Indiana. Lieber has a really nice pool.
Everest loves that he is big enough (and Aurora is too) to pick up Aurora. They have a wonderful bond. I love watching them together.

Getting Ready for Our 100 mile bike trip!

 Nathan and I have both enjoyed biking for a long time. When I was younger, my uncle Mark biked across the US. I thought he was the coolest person ever. I promised myself that I would do something like it someday. The summer before Nathan and I met, he did an 800 mile bike trip through Montana. When I met him, I thought he too was very cool. We have a dream of biking across the US from Canada to Mexico someday.....

Fast forward 8 years and 3 kids later. We decided it is time to stay preparing for our dream. We took the kids on a 12 day 122 mile bike trip. When we first started planning, it was an ambitious 160 miles visiting 8 state parks, but once we drove the route, we realized our sights were set too high. Most of the roads we chose were busy or dirt (neither of which is good with 3 small kids and road bikes). We revamped and re drove our route until we were happy with it. We planned close to 100 miles, 5 campgrounds and 1 hotel. We decided to have a day to rest and let the kids play and enjoy the state parks. 

There was so much preparation into this trip. I think we spent at least as much time planning, driving, shopping, comparing, searching, studying maps, talking to the local bike shop and REI, as we did on the trip.

Bonnie sewed fleece "sleeping bags" for the kids. She made them go over the arms, like a baby sleep sack, this way, they cannot wiggle out of them. The boys picked the material. Thanks Grami!

 

Our new tent arrived.We ordered the smallest 4/5 person tent we could find from REI. It was still huge! The tent weighs 11 pounds. The next size bigger was almost 20 pounds! That is a lot of weight to tow!

Making sure we all fit and there is room to grow into. When the kids are a bit older, the tent will be very snug! Hopefully by then, the kids will want to sleep in their own tent and we can take 2 smaller and lighter tents.

 Preparing the garden for our absents. We put hay down and staked all the tomatoes and beans (something we failed to do before we left for our 3 1/2 week PA trip. We came home to a very over grown garden. All my plants were doing great, but so were the weeds.

07/28/11 Here we are! We started at Lieber State Recreation Area. It was a beautiful campground with LOTS of flat area (very important when sleeping on the ground). Grami Bonnie came on the trip with us. We were happy to have her enjoy this trip with us. Nathan and Bonnie drove the truck and the Saturn to Brown County State Park, our destination, on Friday. They left the truck there and drove the car back.

 Bonnie finishing setting up her tent, and making sure all her gear fit in the BOB trailer.

 Aurora is very excited about the trip, although she will probably sleep most of the time. She also likes to show off her 1 tooth.

 Little monkey. She loved climbing into the Burley trailer we borrowed from our wonderful neighbors. Thanks Benharts, you were with us the whole trip!

The boys playing cars together. They each got 2 new cars to play with on the trip. Sometimes they are so cute.

 Leaf and Grami enjoying a bedtime snack.

Tent and trailers set up. The trailers are empty at this point. We spent 2 nights at Lieber.

Getting ready for bed. I made the kids cotton sleep sacks. Everest was so excited, it was hard for him to get to sleep. I made cotton sleeping bags for Nathan and I. I didn't have to worry about Aurora, she has plenty of fleece and cotton sleep sacks.

 Night, night Leaf. I also made the boys pillows.

Thanks for checking on us. We have had a wonderful summer. We have been so busy, I have had very little time to blog.