Where did summer go part II

I felt like the other post was getting too long. I myself, don't like long things, long games, long movies, long car rides,  long blog posts so, I'm breaking it up into at least two things. Blah blah blah. OK after Alaska we did the Hiawatha trail. It's an old railroad line that has been turned into a bike trail. It's 17 miles long and we were all totally pumped to do it. We did one in Virginia called, the Virginia creeper, and it was amazing. We should have gone into the Hiawatha knowing that it was in the west and so we shouldn't expect the same beauty as the Virginia creeper. The Hiawatha trail was pretty, it really was, just not like the Virginia creeper.

Here we are at the trail head, The cute little ranger that was there giving us safety tips said she takes pictures of people all the time so it wouldn't be a problem to take our picture. She did great except she cut off the top of the sign that says Hiawatha on it. Not great. Anyway, along the trail there are nine tunnels that we had to ride through. We all had our own head lamps so that we could see in the tunnels.

This is after the first tunnel. This is the longest one and is over a mile long. It was only 40 degrees inside so as you rode through, it felt pretty cold. I am scared of the dark so I was pretty nervous the whole time especially since the ranger said that there are rain ditches on the side so don't get too close to the edge or you'll land in the ditch and you can't ride in the middle because there are people coming back through the tunnel so you need to stay on the side. I was imagining our boys, who were ahead of me, flying through the dark tunnel having the time of their lives until the ran into oncoming traffic. Thankfully that was just my irrational fear talking and we made it out the other side of the tunnel in one piece.

Just in case you don't know, 8,771 feet is 1.6 miles. That's how long that first tunnel was. It was pretty cool, even though it was dark and cold and a little nerve racking.

She loved being on the back of the bike. She was happy almost the entire time.

Along this stretch of the trail, we had to share it with the shuttles that were taking people back to the top after they had finished. The shuttles were school buses. I didn't love that part. But the boys thought it was pretty cool. Even though they got honked at. More than once.

See? It was pretty. Those clouds? Not so much. Yeah, not great.

This picture turned out funky because of the lighting but this is inside one of the tunnels. They were so cool.

This is the spot where we stopped for lunch. There is a bridge waaaaayyyy in the background of the picture. That bridge is part of the trail. At this point I think we still had ten miles to go. Which would have been fine except it started to rain. We aren't talking like a nice light rain that will cool you down and then stop. Nope. We're talking about a waterline break in the streets of heaven and the water came gushing out of the sky. We were hoping that it would stop soon so we kept going. It didn't stop. It was cold and wet and we got soggy and sniffly. We were totally unprepared for weather like that. See the shorts and t-shirts that most of my family is wearing? Yeah, that's what we had. Oh, M and K did have sweatshirts but that's it.

We put my sweatshirt on her trying to keep her warm. It mostly worked but her feet were still pretty cold. She was able to sleep for a minute but the trail was so bumpy with rocks that she would get bounced and wake up. 

I think we had about seven miles left to go. She was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. See how wet my sleeves are? By the time we were done, everything on everyone was soaking wet.

We had five miles left. The sun finally came out but we were passed the point of happiness for a certain five year old. He wasn't just crying, he was whaling. I tried distracting him, but it didn't work. he just kept saying his hands were frozen and he was too wet and cold. People would ride by and tell him that he was doing awesome. He didn't want their praise, he wanted to be done. By the time we made it to the bottom, no one was in the mood for a picture by the sign at the end of the trail. A few days after we got home, I was asking the kids what their favorite things are and what they like the least. When we got to him he said his favorite thing was treats and the thing he liked the least was,"long bike rides like Hiawatha. That was terrible." Now that it's over and we've had a few weeks to recover, we can talk about the adventure and that before it started to rain it was really fun and even after the rain stared, it was kind of cool to ride in the rain, for a little while. But we've all agreed that we did it once and don't need to do it again. We're calling it our rainy, cold, bumpy beyond belief, beautiful adventure.

BAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Holy smokes I love this picture so much! B sent this to us from work one day. He said they were using lasers and he wore the glasses to protect his eyes from stray laser beams. I honestly don't know how anyone in the room took anyone else seriously. I would have cracked up laughing if someone wearing these tried talking to me or asked me a question. I know this doesn't have anything to do with summer other than he works in the summer too. It's just so funny and needs to be shared.

I just realized that August isn't over yet so I haven't put August pictures on the computer, so you'll have to wait to hear about it. So what I'm saying is, I probably didn't have to put this on two different posts. Oh well. Hopefully I talk about August before Halloween rolls around. I make no promises.