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.