SUNDAY
Got up at 8:00 to Ride the Bike Trail.
Jennifer made breakfast and we are sitting in yet another National Forest free dispersed campsite next to a beautiful babbling brook, journaling. These are the moments I think I enjoy most – I must work to make more of them.
We Rode the “route of the Hiawatha” bike trail today. Beautiful and highly recommended! It follows an old rail line through some spectacular mountain scenery with something like a dozen old trestle bridges and two dozen tunnels, one of them almost 2 miles long. The trail is almost all slightly downhill and Aly and we’re competing to see who could keep their bike rolling the longest without peddling – we went at least a couple miles powered only by gravity.
Though the trails were solid, some of them were riddled with puddles and mud. The bikes had no fenders which made a combination that left some interesting “marks” on the back of everyone’s clothes. Jennifer thought it reminded her of babies and diaper changing…
The views from atop the trestle bridges were great!
Afterwards we had a nice dinner at the Hilltop restaurant in Kingston Idaho, and drove on through The Eastern grain and desert hills of Washington.
We had planned to go to Potholes state Park, but there were a dozen or more nice free campsites on the shores of pothole reservoir, plus several parking lots available for overnight parking. I think you were supposed to get some sort of State permit, but only the boaters seemed to have them hanging from there mirrors. When we saw hundreds of cars congregating out in the middle of nowhere we knew something was going on. Sure enough, it was a Fourth of July celebration, so we decided to camp at a Public access boat dock/parking lot.
Another bit of serendipity as the timing was almost perfect – we knew there would be no fireworks at Rainier because of fire damage. We watched the fireworks and listened to Country patriotic and party music from a large young families pick up truck speakers. Jennifer and I were tucked in our little cozy bed and asleep in no time as soon as the fireworks were over. I don’t even remember hearing the traffic leave the parking lot. 🙂