A Saturday all to myself!

Hiawatha Trail The kids and I embarked on a 15 mile bike ride through what has been called "one of the most scenic stretches of railroad in the country." The Hiawatha railroad is no longer present but the trail is spectacular winding through ten tunnels, including a 1.7 mile underground tunnel , and over seven high steel trestles through the Bitterroot mountains.Noah was able to ride the entire 15 miles by himself! He was pretty tired at the end, but persevered, and accomplished a great feat! I pulled the other two in the bike trailer. The trail is a 1% downgrade the entire way, so it was a nice ride.

I think that Noah was almost as excited about wearing and drinking from the Camelbak as he was about riding the trail!

This is the Idaho side of the 1.7 mile underground tunnel that starts in Montana and crosses the state line into Idaho. Noah is up at the upper left of this picture. It was pitch black in the tunnel and wet and muddy. Noah took a pretty hard spill inside and we all got a bit muddy, but ultimately survived.

We took several nice breaks along the way, including this one by a small waterfall.

We took this journey with Clint Humpherys, another resident at Sacrd Heart and his two older kids

This is a spectacular view of one of the lower steel trestles, looking from one of the higher stell trestles. If you look close you can see the bikers.

Here is Clint and his kids.

Micah and Deeken had a great time riding in the trailer, even though it was several hours long.

You can see one of the upper steel trestles in the top of this picture. Noah would look up to where we had been and ask "Dad, we went on that?"

At the bottom of the trail we were tired and dirty, but proud of our accomplishment. We took a 40 minute shuttle ride along dirt roads back to the top of the trail, on a school bus, and then rode back through the big underground tunnel to get back to our car. Total trip Noah pedaled 16.7 miles! We hope that Momma enjoyed her day to herself. She definitely deserved it!