Zilla and I woke up early, ready to start our first day along the famed Trail of the Coeur d'Alene. I’d been dreaming of this opportunity for several months. More than 70 miles of perfectly paved, dedicated bike trail without a single piece of gravel or a car in sight. During the horribly difficult miles on the Palouse to Cascades Trail where I was pushing the bike and trailer at around 2 miles per hour, the distant thoughts of a perfect bike trail like the Trail of the Coeur d'Alene helped keep me going and today, that dream was about to become a reality!

As we starting setting up the bike in the parking lot for the trail, we saw something we hadn’t seen during our entire journey across Washington, another dog in a bike trailer! I tried to talk to the man and his dog, but he indicated that his dog was reactive to other dogs and that Zilla and I shouldn’t approach. Thanks to a zoom lens, I was still able to get a photo of our first bike trailer trail dog encounter!

After he distantly “met” the other trailer dog, Zilla and I rolled over to the trailhead only to be thoroughly confused by the sign. It was a mileage marker and it was reading “MILE -.7” as in “negative point 7 miles”. Thankfully, it was an informative sign explaining this situation. Apparently, there had been a lot of pollution from the railroad that needed to be cleaned up as the area had been declared a Superfund Site because of all the toxic waste, not a good designation. Through a series of agreements, a way was found to let the waste stay on the trail but to bury it all at a safe depth. In return, the Coeur d'Alene tribe was granted permission to move the trailhead of the trail .7 miles away to it’s current location. However, all of the interpretive signs and mileage markers for the trail were already in place, so rather than throw them all away and have to move them and change the overall distance of the trail, it was decided to just count the distance from the original trailhead to the new trailhead as negative distance. A pretty ingenious way to save a bunch of hassle if you think about it.

We then started down the trail towards mile marker 0 but before we got there, I stopped to use the restroom. When I came out, there was woman standing near Zilla and the bike trailer and she said to me, “I think I’ve seen one of your other Pedals4Paws people on Facebook.” I thanked her for recognition but told her that there wasn’t another person with Pedals4Paws, just me. She then responded, “I’m so sorry about your other dog.” I was taken aback; we were in a different state and yet someone here had found Pedals4Paws on Facebook and had been following our journey. We had a brief conversation and I gave her a Pedals4Paws sticker to thank her for following us. I then realized I was low on stickers and since we were still just a few hundred yards from the car, I decided to go back and get more.

As we went back, we passed a group of cyclists in the parking lot and I saw hello and continued to my car. As I got there, I realized that one of the cyclists had broken from her group and was riding up to talk to me. The very first words out of her mouth were, “I’m so sorry about Captain.” I immediately starting crying. Not only were we being recognized again, but our stories had made enough impact on this woman that she even remembered Captain’s name. This was the first time that really hit me that strangers in the real world were following our posts and stories and that we were actually impacting people in some way. We spoke at length and I gave her a sticker as well before she left to rejoin her group.

Zilla and I then set off on what would become my favorite trail we’d ridden together.