The last two years, we’ve been slackers in the bicycling department, failing to just get out and ride on nearby bike trails. But, we have traveled far and wide in our camper van to seek out new trails and revisit trails we’ve ridden parts of. Here, then, is a short list of rides in 2024 across Washington, Idaho, and Montana, most since we finished outfitting our new van, Bianca. The demise of our previous van, Bella, in January put a damper on our travels and bicycling until we completed the new van, a build covered elsewhere.
As soon as we acquired Bianca, we did take the bike out, ignominiously laid on the bare floor of the van, for our usual winter bike escape at the local airport industrial park.
After we installed the hitch rack for the bicycle, we started taking the bike with us when we went on the Tuesday morning hikes with the Senior Center walking group, then either camping overnight near the hiking destination or going to a bike trail or scenic route after the hike. In June, we revisited the Raymond trailhead of the Willapa Hills Trail State Park. We had ridden from there several years ago, but the trail had not been improved past the short paved section, and we had turned off into Willapa Valley, where we found a delightful winery and eventually found our way back to Raymond. But, this time, we continued on on the trail, which had been improved since, until we reached the part that wasn’t.
The first week in July, we had the opportunity to go to eastern Washington, to meet our granddaughter, who was traveling from Arizona to attend a July 4 concert at the Gorge at George. On the way, we arranged to spend a couple of nights at a state park on the Columbia River near the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail. This gave us a chance to ride the rough gravel/railroad ballast trail to cross the Beverly Bridge across the river. The railroad bridge had been brought up to trail standards and opened in 2021, to join the two halves of the trail, which runs 237 miles from North Bend, east of Seattle, to the Idaho border, mostly following the old Milwaukee Road right-of-way, with a number of detours around collapsed bridges, collapsed tunnels, and private land.
Later in the month, we chose to head north after a Tuesday hike, seeking a place to camp and ride. In the height of the Olympic Peninsula tourist season, we managed to get the next-to-last campsite at Fort Flagler State Historic Park. We got in two rides, but only published video from the second one, where we pedaled in early morning through the upper campground and to the decommissioned artillery batteries facing the entrance to Admiralty Inlet.
After another Tuesday hike, farther west, we continued on to Lake Quinault, where we had made reservations at the popular national forest campgrounds near the Lodge. We rode from there along the south shore road, partly paved, and partly gravel, to the Olympic National Park boundary, repeating most of a ride we had done in 2013. The morning fog burned off for the trip back. The destination, Bunch Falls, was a disappointment, obscured by a screen of fallen trees, and we chose not to ride the additional mile to the bridge across the Quinault River this time, as the gravel part of the road was thicker and looser than last time.
When we first acquired our new van, we took it to a van outfitters to have the roof fan installed, since it was winter and not feasible to do it ourselves. When we dropped off the van near Washougal, we were on foot, walking to town on the levee trail along the Columbia River. We decided to come back when we could to ride the trail. By late summer, we did return, riding out through the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge.
In mid-September, we ventured out for an extended tour to visit friends and relatives in Montana and Idaho, and, of course, ride our bike when we could, on and off the beaten track. Over the next few weeks, we found time to ride in the Bitterroot Valley in a place we hadn’t when we lived there. We finished sections of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes in Idaho we hadn’t in our 20-year quest to ride the entire 72-mile trail in both directions, which took us to the east end and middle of the trail. We also meandered up near the Canadian border, to ride a relatively new trail, the Ferry County Rail Trail, on a groomed section completed in 2016, along Curlew Lake in Washington.