Category Archives: Bicycling

Expedition 2023, part 2, week 6: North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Parkway

We got our exercise the week we stayed in North Carolina, carrying gear and food from the van, seen below, parked half-way up the drive, to the cabin, up behind the trees to the right. Judy is visible at the top, near the next switchback that leads to the cabin.

With a few days downtime, we rested up from many trips on foot up and down the mountain between the van and the cabin, catching up on visiting and Internet.  Judy spent a day helping with a sewing project, and I roasted up a pan of vegetables to get back to real cooking.  We had to move the van to make room for the power company crew that came in to reset the guy wires on the power pole we parked next to.  The tires spun as we backed up into the next leg of the switchback, but far enough.

Mid-week, we made a trip into town, with much rocking back and forth to turn around and aim down the mountain, following instructions to swing wide at the last switchback, barely clearing the edge of the road.  The paved road seemed even steeper, descending into the touristy strip town and again down to the next town, where we refueled and did a bit of shopping before climbing back up to the mountain and once again skidding through the switchback and positioning the truck at the small parking area at the next, too steep switchback. Loading our purchases into a backpack, we trudged up the next two switchbacks to the cabin. That evening, the rains came, as predicted, promising to continue into the next day, when we hoped to help with the building project in front of our van.

The safari tent platform, torched to accent the grain.

With Matt home, and the rain stopped, the safari tent platform project began again.  A few last minute major design changes ended up with a rectangular platform 14′ x 16‘1“ (Matt assumed the boards were exact length…).  We took time out to attend our Thursday Yoga session with the Mason County Senior Activity Center at home, via Zoom.  The plywood flooring got put in, but the rains came again overnight, making it necessary to screw down several panels that started to delaminate.  So much for outdoor rated plywood.  But, all was well and square, and the dynamic duo fired up a propane torch, the kind used to kill weeds, to scorch the flooring to bring out the grain, a nice effect.

The guest safari tent, up on the platform. The next week, they put on the rain fly and deck.

Friday, the tent went up, taking all four of us to spread it out, rig the steel tubing frame, and raise it up.  Wow!  This tent is huge!  A quick call to the manufacturer to clarify some issues about how the “porch” was attached, and all was well, ready for the assembly of the porch and rain fly on Saturday.  

But, Saturday was our time to move on: we packed out early while the team made yet another lumber yard run and were ready to ease the van down the mountain by the time they returned.  I had carefully turned the van around to face downhill the previous afternoon, a tricky maneuver, to say the least.

The view from inside the tent. This will be a wonderful vacation getaway in the Smoky Mountains when completed.

Down off the mountain in one piece, we headed back up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and wound around the northbound path, which first took us far south, over the highest point, and then north to Ashville, three hours later.  Ashville is about a 40-minute drive had we taken the highway.  

Back on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near the viaduct between Linville and Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

By this time, Judy had had enough of white-knuckle hairpin turns with no guardrails and sheer drop-offs thousands of feet to the valley below, so we consulted with the rangers at the visitors center and chose to jump around the Parkway, skipping 150 km of winding ridge-running, and resuming the tour before the famous viaduct that suspends the Parkway out from the cliffs.  Soon after, we came to a detour necessitated by a bridge repair far ahead.  Instead of returning to the Parkway at the end of the detour, we continued on the parallel valley back roads that led to our destination for the night, as the Parkway route would have necessitated backtracking several miles.  We put in just at sunset and just over the Virginia border.

On Sunday, October 1, we awoke early to thick fog. We packed up in the dark and drove over the Ridge to the New River valley, where we broke out the tandem bicycle for the first time since the Cades Cove run in the Great Smoky Mountains.  We had read another couple’s story of their journey on this famous rail trail, and were anxious to try a short section of it.  However, in the week or so since their report, the very section of the trail we wanted to ride had been closed for bridge repairs.  Undaunted, we elected to ride the scenic section before that, from Foster Falls to the settlement of Austinville, a short five-mile segment, but entirely along the river and through one of two tunnels on the 57-mile trail.  The fog was still heavy, so we had a wet passage upriver to Austinville, but it lifted enough we had some views of the other side of the river on the way back.

After finishing our ride, we resumed our trip on US 221, which parallels the Blue Ridge Parkway, but through the valleys, heading north, ending up near I-66, the route to Washington, DC.

Expedition 2023, part 2, week 5: Georgia to Tennessee and North Carolina

A day into week 5, we bade farewell to the family and headed farther north, to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we camped for two nights at Cades Cove.  Wednesdays from May through September, the one-way loop road around the spectacularly beautiful valley is closed to cars, so on Wednesday morning, we joined hundreds of other cyclists of all ages, on all manner of bikes: road, hybrid, trikes, mountain, kids, e-assist, and our one lone tandem, for the 18-km rolling loop.  We were a bit unprepared for the Category 4 and Category 3 climbs, but enjoyed being scofflaws, breaking the 20-mph (32 kph) speed limit on the downhills while filming forbidden video (though the NPS more or less ignores casual filming for personal, non-commercial use).  We pushed the heavy tandem up a lot of hills, but had an excellent time. Link to video below:

Leaving at dawn on Thursday, we traveled back though the park, with a brief detour to Gatlinburg, TN, for groceries.  We took a side trip to Clingmans Dome, where we hiked the steep 800-meter trail up to the observation tower, 2000 meters above sea level.  The Smoky Mountains earned their name, with the cloud cover and haze obscuring all but the nearby peaks, but the view was spectacular nevertheless.  We took a few steps on the Appalachian Trail just below the tower, to say we had “hiked” it.

View north from the observation tower at Clingman’s Dome, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee.

Continuing on, we turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, getting off at the first exit on US 19 to spend the rest of the week with our son and his wife at their cabin a few miles off the Parkway and up a steep mountainside.  We parked at the future “Glamping” site at the second of four switchbacks on the way to their cabin, with a good southern exposure for solar to keep our refrigerator running.

Parked at the second of four switchbacks on Matt & Darice’s driveway. On solar power for the week.

Our planned itinerary went awry once again, as our son’s work schedule had changed. With only the weekend to visit, we decided to spend a few days into the next week to wait for him to return from his out-of-town job, and help a bit with their construction projects in the meanwhile.

The town of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, from our parking spot on Sheepback Mountain.

Expedition 2023 — Part II, week 1: Montana

In part I, in January and February, we traveled along the southern border to Boca Chica along the Gulf Coast, and visited with Larye’s side of the family.  In Part II, we head east, visiting Judy’s side of the family, then up the east coast to the Maritime provinces and along the southern border of Canada back home.  Anyway, that’s the plan.

Smoke from the massive fires in British Columbia blankets Eastern Washington from the Cascades to Spokane. Photo by Judy.

Like the earlier expedition, we started with a major refit on the van: this time, it was a few weeks in the body shop for a very expensive minor repair that saw us pulling the interior out of the van and making modifications to the electrical system and structures in the garage, followed by a frantic three-day re-installation and load-out. The first day’s drive was through thick smoke across Washington State, culminating in a surreal drive through the Gray Fire still smoldering on both sides of I-90 just west of Spokane.

Fire crew mopping up the Gray Fire, along I-90 between Medical Lake and Cheney, WA. The freeway was closed for several days while the fire raged between the two cities. Photo by Judy.

Fortunately, the skies were clear beyond, and we put in for the night at a big box store parking lot just across the Idaho border.  In the morning, we headed early to a freeway rest area where we made coffee and breakfast before continuing on to Montana.

Our original plan to go to Idaho, Montana, and then across Canada before heading south to visit the east coast family was turned inside out as we got news from friends and relatives we intended to visit along the way. Exigencies of health and their travel schedules dictated that we head first for Montana to visit a friend who had broken her elbow in a freak home accident, then continue on to Idaho, Florida, and Georgia.

Our Montana visit was most welcome: Judy provided expert nursing care and advice and Larye cooked for the few days we were there.  We saw other friends from our quilting years, and took a few hours off for a bike ride in the midst of running an errand in Missoula. With our pattern of riding parts of long trails each time we pass by, we finished the last section of the Bitterroot Trail, from Missoula to Lolo.

Bitterroot River, from the Bitterroot Trail, a mult-use trail from Missoula to Hamilton. View: between Missoula and Lolo, MT.

Somehow, we managed to accept a stash of yarn from another friend, which took some creative rearranging of our storage in the van to accommodate.  The yarn will be left with family in Florida, more than two weeks hence.  We spent two nights and a day visiting another friend who shares Judy’s crafting and beading activities: Judy spent the afternoon creating decorative papers while Larye uploaded video footage from our bike ride, parked outside the local library to use their WiFi.

Sunset, Hamilton, MT

Finally, it was time to move on, into Idaho: we said our goodbyes, Judy caught up on WiFi at the library, we grabbed some pastries and espresso at a bakery, and headed south over Lost Trail Pass, into darkening skies.

Trapper Peak, the tallest peak in the Bitterroot Range. Photo from US 93, near Darby, MT.

Warm Showers 2019 — A Sabbatical Year: No Guests

In a departure from the last 8 years, we had no Warm Showers guests in 2019. About the time the season normally starts, we went on tour. With our tandem in the van, we traveled through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, and Illinois, staying a few days here, a week there, or just overnight, riding our bike where there were trails, with some camping, some motels, some AirB&Bs, or staying with friends, over a month “on the road.” After only a week at home, we were off again in our van/bike rig, alternately camping and staying at motels on our way through British Columbia and Alberta, spending some time at Prince George at a conference and with relatives in Dawson Creek.

Returning home on the first day of summer, we planned to receive visiting relatives, so stayed off the roles at Warm Showers for a few more weeks. Then, when we finally hung out the shingle, Judy became ill: we had to cancel a reservation for what would have been our first guest, in mid-July. After she spent 10 days in hospital and a month of post-surgical convalescence, we went on another camping/biking trip, to Oregon, coming home to prepare to receive yet another family visitor, so we decided to simply cancel the entire season, and will be open to receive Warm Showers guests in the spring of 2020.

Looking back over the past eight years, we have had well over 200 guests, ages 8 months to over 70, one to seven at a time, couples, friends, fellow travelers, adult child and parent, and families, including a few dogs, 25 to 50 guests a year, depending on how much travel we did during the season, which basically runs from March through November, and other factors, such as the summer five years ago when I was recovering from cardiac bypass surgery, which shortened the season.

This year, we’ve had to satisfy ourselves with keeping track of the many former guests with whom we still keep in contact, through Facebook or their personal blogs:

  • Peter, who turned 70 on his epic trip from the Yukon to Argentina, a nearly two-year journey, and who, at 77, still tours, popping up here and there around the world.
  • Sarah, who turned her first solo tour–from Seattle to Santa Barbara, when we first met her–into a career as a bike tour guide and semi-retirement as a world traveler and blogger, sending missives from Argentina, India, and Spain, among other places, in her blog, at http://www.honoringmycompass.com/
  • Bastien, who became enamored of the kinetic sculpture races in northern California and came back the next year to participate, and who achieved the goal back home in France of riding 500 km in under 24 hours.
  • Normand and Helene, who cut their 2014 tour short with a crash near Seaside, Oregon, and who later rode from Calgary to Argentina on their tandem, during which trip Normand turned 60, and who just finished a grand tour from Turkey to France through the Balkans, Italy, and Switzerland, through the mountains.
  • Glen and Bobbie, in their 60s, who returned home after a trans-America tour to hike the Appalachian Trail and this year just completed a triathlon.
  • Megan, who, with her friend Gordon, from Scotland, cycled from Alaska to Argentina and spends her summers off from teaching in Wisconsin to travel the world on humanitarian missions.
  • Eric, who called us at the end of a list of 24 other hosts, stranded in a late fall storm 60 km away, 10,000 miles into a tour around the U.S. We picked him up and sent him off dry the next day. We since visited him when passing through Moab, where he worked at a bike shop. He now lives in Colorado and has twice participated in and finished the Tour Divide, which follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, a self-supported 2745-mile bicycle race from Banff, Alberta to the U.S.-Mexico border, on trails and forest roads.
  • Chris, who cycled all 50 states and has published the first of several volumes of conversations with people he met on the way, starting his own publishing company in the process.
  • Marge, from France, who bicycled solo from Canada to Argentina, sporting each country’s flag in turn on a staff and mount we gave her with the U.S. flag we carried on our East Coast tour in 2016.
  • Klaus, a medically retired mining engineer who wandered the Australian Outback with two camels for 11 years before collecting a pension and traveling the world on his bicycle: he wasn’t a Warm Showers member, we met him at a bakery on a rainy day and invited him to stop for the night.
  • Bryan, a professional cook, who stayed an extra day and cooked for us, surprised that we had equipment for southeast Asian cooking.
  • Isabella, whose host gift to us was a pair of bike socks from a previous supported tour, which I often wear.
  • Jayshil, who passed through from Canada returning to New Zealand years ago, now lives in Melbourne, Australia.  He regularly rides 100 km “training rides” and toured Iceland this past summer.
  • Michael, who passed through with his college classmates after graduation, went to Africa with the Peace Corps and has completed medical school.
  • Angela, from Canada, who found us through a Facebook forum, recommended by:
  • Nico, an Iowan who has settled in Portland, and who returned several years later to introduce us to his fiancé.
  • Lauri, another host a day’s ride away, with whom we have shared guests on adjacent nights, follow each other on Facebook, and have yet to arrange a ride together, but soon…
  • Lindy, an award-winning weaver from New Zealand, who altered her itinerary to stay with us when she discovered we were also weavers.

Many guests for whom English is a distant second or third language, conversing through electronic translators. And many more, who have stayed, become family for the night, and moved on, sometimes turning up in other guests’ stories as met on the road or through Warm Showers as hosts or guests in other parts of the world, and some who have returned to “normal” but interesting lives as extraordinary people who once ventured to challenge themselves by traversing a continent under their own power, on a bicycle.

As it stands, now, we are looking forward to meeting our fellow cyclists again starting in Spring 2020, and extending ourselves just a bit more in our own adventures, inspired by our guests.

Road Trip 2019: The Bicycle Video Diaries

Road Trip 2019, parts 1 and 2 are now completed.  One of the goals for our road trips in our 70s is to ride our tandem bicycle on great bike trails and routes across the U.S. and Canada. This trip was no different: we took time out to ride parts of:

  • Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes in Idaho
  • Missouri Headwaters Trail in Montana
  • Rapid Creek Trail in Rapid City, South Dakota
  • Iowa Great Lakes Trail around Lake Okoboji and Spirit Lake
  • Simcoe Loop Trail in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada
  • Great Lakes Shore Trail along Lake Ontario near Bath, Ontario
  • Pheasant Branch Trail in Middleton, Wisconsin
  • Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes again
  • Shelton Valley Loop, a quick ride at home between the two parts of our road trip
  • Bear Creek Trail in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada
  • Canyon to Coast Trail near Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada

Our total riding distance between the start of our adventure and the end was just a few meters shy of 340 km, while the bike rode nearly 15,000 km in the back of the van in that time.

As we usually do, we document most of our bicycle adventures with a video diary.

Edaville,Trail of the Coeur d’ Alenes from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

This was a very cold morning near freezing, at the end of April, so we rode a very short way down the trail and back, from the trailhead we rode up the trail from last year.

Missouri Headwaters from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We camped overnight at the Headwaters State Park, where the bike trail ends, and rode into Three Forks in the morning.  It was cold, so we didn’t stop in town, but drove back in the car after the ride for our morning coffee.

Rapid Creek part 1 from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We drove a short way, from Belle Fourche to Rapid City, intending to ride the length of the trail.  We rode from the Founders Park, near downtown up the creek to the end of the trail, racing back to the car ahead of a rain storm, cutting our intended ride a bit short.

Rapid Creek, part 2 from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We stayed in Rapid City overnight, then started early on Saturday morning to ride the rest of the trail, again starting at Founders Park.  Bridge repairs near the end of the trail cut this ride a bit short, too, so we retraced a bit of yesterday’s ride and a spur trail to the north.

Okoboji2 from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

In 2017, we rode most of the way around Lake Okoboji, anti-clockwise, from the east side, when we had a tire failure.  A runner on the trail gave us a ride to the bike shop, where we got the bike tuned and new tubes and finished the loop.  This year, we started on the west side and rode clockwise, completing the loop with no problems.  We didn’t know it then, but my cousin Jack Parkins lives at the top of the hill on the on-road segment of the trail south of the lake: we visited them a few days later.

Spirit Lake – Loon Lake from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Instead of riding from our resort and repeating almost half the previous ride, we drove to a trailhead in Spirit Lake and rode up the west side of the lake and took the Jackson County [Minnesota] trail to Loon Lake, where I spent several summers camping as a Boy Scout, in the 1950s.

Tay Shore Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

After some rainy weather that kept us off the mostly gravel trails near where we were staying, we drove up to this paved trail, which was very nice, but the rain caught us at the turn-around point near Midland. Still, it was a good ride.

Wasaga Beach – Collingwood from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

This was quite a drive from our lodging, but was a route mostly on paved roads.  We had driven through Collingwood on the way to visit Own Sound a few days before and decided not to ride the gravel rail trail beyond Collingwood.  This one took us through beach home neighborhoods and through the Sunset Point Park on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron.

MillenniumTrail, Orillia, Ontario from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

A short segment of the Simcoe Loop Trail, designated the Millennium Trail, runs along the shore of Lake Couchiching in Orillia. We rode this on Saturday of this long holiday weekend (Victoria Day), so there were lots of people out.  We also encountered thick clouds of midges, and had to stop and clean them out of my eyes, nose, and beard.

Loyalist Parkway from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We left the Orillia area on Sunday during the Victoria Day holiday weekend, driving east to Peterborough and then south to Bath, where we stayed at an AirB&B.  In the morning, we rode west from Bath along the shore of Lake Ontario before joining the heavy traffic into Toronto as holiday travelers returned home.

Pheasant Branch 2019 from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We had ridden the Pheasant Branch trail, near our son’s house, in 2015 and 2017 and counted it as one of our favorites.  We were appalled to find that the trail had been almost totally destroyed in a flood in August, 2018.  Fortunately, most of the bridges had been restored, but it was largely rough gravel and sand down through the canyon, so we returned via the city streets.

Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes: Cataldo MP 39-44 from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

On the way home, we camped in Cataldo, Idaho, taking an early evening ride up to where we had turned around on that freezing April morning more than a month ago.  Passing our campground to ride farther down the trail, we spotted a young moose headed toward the trail through the campground.  We stopped for a few long-distance photos, then pedaled on.  We hadn’t gone too far when the  storm clouds building to the west flashed lightning and a very close thunderclap.  As it was warm and humid, we hadn’t packed our rain gear, so we turned around and sped back to camp.  However, the rain passed to the northwest.  So, we have a 10-mile section from mileposts 29 to 39 yet to ride on the lower half of the Trail of the Coeur d’ Alenes, plus the section from Osburn to Mullen through Wallace on the upper end.  The weather has never cooperated with us: it’s taken us 15 years to complete 96 miles of the 144-mile round trip ride on this trail, and 61 of that was the first time, in 2004.

Shelton Valley Sunday from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

When we really need a bike ride and don’t have time to drive to a trail or rural area, we ride the 10-mile loop through downtown Shelton and around Shelton Valley, just west of town.  We can choose to ride clockwise or anti-clockwise, and there is enough climbing to give a good workout.  This was an anti-clockwise run.

Grande Prairie from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We thought we might get to ride some on the way to and in Prince George, but the weather didn’t cooperate on the way up and our weekend was entirely taken up with the fiber arts conference.  Then, we stayed with relatives on a gravel road west of Dawson Creek, so there wasn’t much opportunity there.  But, we found this delightful urban trail down the creek running through the middle of Grande Prairie, Alberta.  We camped next to the trail, but the wind was too strong to ride the afternoon we arrived, so we broke camp in the morning and rode from the parking lot at the mid-point of the trail.  The trail was a good workout with curves and rolling up and down the sides of the canyon, with a lot of children in summer programs along the trail, so we took the city streets back to the van, driving another 175 km south to our next stop: we should have pressed on another 150 km, as we drove that the next morning–in a late June blizzard along the Rocky Mountain Front.

Chilliwack–Fraser Valley from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Our last ride started where it all began, 33 years ago.  In 1986, one of our first big group rides was an 80-km (50-miles, a “Semi-Century”) ride from Nooksack School in Washington State, down the Sumas River, across the border to Chilliwack and return.  This trip, we parked on the north side of Chilliwack and rode the dyke along the Fraser River to the Rosedale-Agazziz Bridge and back along the Camp Slough, reminded on the way back of the persistent wind that blows up the Fraser valley: that long-ago ride, we fought the wind all the way back, 40 km, arriving an hour later than the rest of the quite large group, though we had been with them at the turn-around.  Choosing to ride along the cottonwood-lined slough was a good choice: we had much less wind.

Road Trip 2019: There and Back Again