Great American Rail Trail
Crossing the Raging River - Near Preston, WA
Having had a couple of days to think about my idea of using bicycle travel as a way to raise money for animals in need, I could not have been more excited. My biggest passions in life are animals, travel, the great outdoors, and pushing my physical limits. This idea incorporated all 4 of these and not only that, it was something that could be done with my two best friends. I finally felt like after 41 years, I had figured out what to do with my life. I was ecstatic!
There were still a lot of hurdles though and planning that would need to go into place before I could devote my entire life to this pursuit. In my mind, step one was seeing if I could handle it physically. I had never done long rides before on a daily basis, let alone with the trailer, so I thought it made sense to take a week off of work and spend as much time as possible riding with the dogs. Since we’d already made such a great, unbroken line from the Pacific Ocean to Bothell, WA, it only made sense to pick up where we left off and continue on.
I started researching bike routes from where we had left off and that’s when I came across the Great American Rail Trail (GART). Instantly, I knew this was going to be our route! The Great American Rail Trail runs from Washington D.C. all the way to the Pacific Ocean at La Push, WA, the start of the Olympic Discovery Trail! Looking at the map, our entire ride so far had inadvertently followed the exact route of the GART! At first this sounds incredibly implausible but it actually made perfect sense. The Great American Rail Trail is designed to use abandoned railways and convert them to pedestrian paths and I had been looking for the flattest route possible on all of our rides and trains mostly go over flat terrain so naturally we’d been following the GART without even knowing it existed.
Not ready to try adding camping gear into the mix, I found a centrally located, dog friendly motel (Motel 6) and we headed out for the week. Our first day’s ride was a beautiful ride along the Sammamish River Trail. As you might expect, the trail follows along the Sammamish River near Redmond, WA, home to Microsoft. The sky kept threatening rain, but it near fully materialized which was great because it helped keep the trail census low and I always prefer solitude over crowds. I’m an introvert by nature, but also I find that the less people that are around, the more likely you are to see wildlife and I’d always rather see wildlife than people. Today was no different, we got to see a beautiful heron from relatively close and we had a river otter run across the trail directly in front of us. I had to hit the brakes so that we didn’t run into him. Though by the time I’d gotten the camera out, he was already in the dense vegetation, making his way back to the river.
(click photos to enlarge and see descriptions)
The second day was along the East Lake Sammamish Trail and was pretty unremarkable, so much so that I didn’t take any pictures. The trail runs near the shore of Lake Sammamish, but the views are mostly obscured by tightly packed homes of what I can only assume to be fairly wealthy people. Over the entire day, we only saw a handful of residents but easily saw dozens of landscaping crews tending to the properties. One of the few residents we saw was a guy flying his personal, one man helicopter and landing in his yard. The landing pad was maybe 50 feet from us so we got hit by the rotor wash and a fair amount of debris. Needless to say, I could have done without Richie Rich and his helicopter nearly blowing us over. The trail itself was a mixed bag of pavement or wet dirt and gravel, which made for some slow progress. We were happy to have a trail though rather than have to ride along the busy road nearby. We lucked out too, there were signs posted all over that several miles of the trail were going to be under construction beginning the following week and the trail would be closed for the next year or two, so we just made it!
Day three would bring us back more into nature and had us begin our climb up into the foothills of the Cascades. We found ourselves leaving behind the metropolitan sprawl of the greater Seattle area as we started to climb the Issaquah-Preston Trail. I was having some doubts about how well the day would go as the trail would leave the pavement behind and turn into a steep climb on wet dirt and gravel. We hadn’t had a climb like this before. But also, I was feeling the effects of the previous 2 days of riding and my legs were tired. I knew though that if I was going to be serious about Pedal4Paws and raising money for animals, I was going to have to be able to ride more consistently, so I decided to ride through the soreness.
The climbing started off well, though we did take a wrong turn at an unmarked intersection, causing us to climb an extra 100 feet of unnecessary hill. We were already in for a big day, so we couldn’t afford many more of those types of mistakes. Having righted ourselves, we left the pavement behind and entered the forest and there, something wonderful happened. Nothing! Though we’d transitioned to the damp, soft gravel and mud, I didn’t notice any change in the amount of effort I needed to cycle. This was amazing and did wonders for my confidence. I no longer doubted we’d hit our goal for the day and instead was able to relax and enjoy the slow climb in the woods.
We finished the day’s climb in the town of Preston near a delightful statue of a pig which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first pig being sold at a market in Seattle. Kind of an odd thing to commemorate, but the more pig statues, the better. Besides, Captain was pleased to see one of her namesakes.
I was still feeling surprisingly strong and didn’t want to stop yet, so I decided to press on and do the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail. Everything started out great but things started going downhill fast, literally. Since we weren’t planning on doing this section of trail yet, I hadn’t bothered to look at the trail conditions and the trail started with a very steep drop off down to the Raging River, before climbing just as steeply up the other side. The trail got so comically steep that there was a series of at least 6 switchbacks in the space of no more than maybe 100 yards. The turns were so tight that I had to unhook the trailer from the bike and move them up one piece at a time as there wasn’t enough room to move through as one piece. The dogs seemed a bit confused as to why I was pulling them by hand, but we made it work. The ride back required going back through the steep switchbacks again, this time downhill, and then climbing back out from the Raging River. I was really tired at this point, but I knew that once we made it back to the pig statue, we would be coasting downhill for the rest of the day and that kept me going. When we made it back to the car, I felt like the king of the world; the next day would be the complete opposite….
