We have moved over to St. Helens for a few days this week. We are getting our annual dental checkups and visiting old friends. Today we jumped onto Path, our recumbent tandem bicycle and rode from St. Helens to Scappoose. Then we rode around the Scappoose dike lands. This is some farmlands that have been developed from the flood plain of the Willamette River many decades ago. The main highway of the region is US-30. It is four lanes and roaring along at 55 plus. Turning off onto the dike road puts us on narrow twisting roads with practically no traffic.
Tag Archives: bicycling
Triathlon
Sometimes we are just at the right spot and at the right time. We are currently camping at Millerton Lake State Recreation Area near Fresno, CA. This morning the nearby boat ramp was invaded by a couple hundred triathletes and we had front row seats for the Millerton Lake Triathlon. These folks swam 400 yards, bicycled twelve miles and ran three miles. Six of the fastest men did the whole route in under an hour.
Mittry Lake
Sometimes our life is one long campout. This has been one of those weeks. We joined up with a small group of friends near Yuma, AZ. We were camped on the desert on the shores of a small backwater off of the Colorado River called Mittry Lake. We were almost roughing it. We had no electric, no running water, no cable TV, no cell phone and no internet. We did have sparkling clear skies and a full moon each night. We sang songs around the campfire, had pot luck meals and coyotes yelping right under our windows in the middle of the night.
Natchez Trace, Then and Now:
For four days now we have been traveling the Natchez Trace, a trail that served the “Old Southwest” from about 1775 to 1820 or so. It was declared a National Post Road in 1800 and many improvements were made to it by the US Army and civilian contractors. With the coming of the steam paddlewheel river boats on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers the Natchez Trace fell into disuse and slowly melted back into the undergrowth.
2008 in Review
We relocated 116 times in 2008. This is about average for us. For 2007 it was 125 times and 2006, 118 times. Total distance driven was 10,465, bicycled 2,097 and hiked 236 miles for a grand total of 12,798 miles in 2008. That works out to 108 miles per move. Our big event for the year was the big Dinsmore-Cook family reunion in Colville Washington. It was really fun having all the children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces and nephews together. We were glad that we made our big trip to Alaska in 2007, but my records show that we did not substantially curtail our travels in 2008. We never have enjoyed driving long days. We have developed a style of travel where we pick a monument or battlefield along the way for a mid day break. We either hike or break out the bicycle for an hour of exploring; then we then get back on the road and complete the day’s route. We were more careful planning our stops this year and we are getting better at staying put for at least two or three days.