The first day's ride was from rattlesnake lake trailhead out of North Bend to a campground in Eaton just off of I-90. We biked uphill on an old railroad grade until we were knackered, finally ready to stop... it turned out we were actually already at the top of Snoqualmie Pass. At this point there is an old railway tunnel two miles long. Complete darkness and temps in the 40's, its safe to say we "couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel"!
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| Snoqualmie Tunnel Time |
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| Brandon and The Girl gearing up |
We grabbed the first hiker/biker walk-in site, which are first-come-first served and not reserve-able ahead of time, they're just our style! Our base camp was setup at Eaton Campground by early afternoon and Annabelle played in the tent like a big enclosed playpen, jumping on air mattresses, and such.
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| Annabelle is working on a bouldering project |
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| Just checking out the accommodations |
The highlight of our day was a random bathroom trip -where we ran into Anna, Phil and their twin girls. who stopped at the campground bathroom in a family bathroom emergency. Apparently our bowels have a spiritual connection.
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| Just outside Camp Eaton Bathroom |
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| Very scenic trails |
Early evening we found two bike packers riding around the campground looking for a place to stay- but all sites were occupied. We offered them a spot at our campsite-but warned them we had a baby. They offered to split the $12 cost, and were obviously desperate to get off the saddle as they said, "crying babies don't bother us". The girl was a full on 9 star out of 10 terrorist that night.
The next day we planned to ride to the Thorp fruit stand and back for around 65 mile day. The first 10 miles were hard packed gravel that made for easy, care free, traffic free, relaxed bike riding- blissful even. We should have been satisficed with stopping there. Atlas, like two stubborn dumbasses- we road passed Cle Elum on to the Thorp fruit stand, hard set on eating Thorp fruit stand ice cream. The trails were grotesque like Quaismodo having sex. There was one intermittent single tire track pounded into the gravel but the rest of the trail was super loose rock. The wide trailer dragged through the rock acting like an anchor or parachute that resisted you with every single pedal stroke. It was 8 mph of difficult soul crushing savage. Why did it take 40 miles for us to learn that gravel miles are different than pavement miles? We went to college, but we got schooled big time.
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| Spirits are high after BBQ |
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| Trying to recover at the fruit stand |
On a positive tangent we found a nice pile of free kid crap and Annabelle got a new toy car. We also ate really good food at a BBQ place right off the trail in Cle Elum.
The last day out was much more forgiving - this direction was mainly downhill so we easily hauled ass back to the van. Barely pedaling at 20 mph we rode through the tunnel again. This time we turned on the bike trailer lights and had a flashing raging tunnel party. Mostly consisting of us chanting and singing "oost oost oost oost" over and over again. while booty shaking. We also passed another couple pulling a trailer - we had to.
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| Happily riding downhill |
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| A Belle brake |
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