With the COVID 19 outbreak, school closures, the White Mountains 100 canceled and social distancing looming Nancy and I discussed doing a last minute family cabin trip. The cabins do not see that much in the way of visitation, and hopefully would be safe from threat of COVID 19. After checking the reservation system for the White Mountains NRA, we noticed that Moose Creek cabin was open Monday night, and we quickly booked it planning to head out there via snow bike. It should be a mellow 16 mile bike ride one way.
The day before our trip I went for a 9 hour ride with some friends, and it was soft and a bit slow. When I got back I suggested we should consider skiing, but was poo-pooed. Hmm..
After a bit of work, we managed to get all four bikes, two dogs, and all our gear into (and on!) the truck, and headed off to the trail head. A bit of re-packing and bike juggling we were soon hitting the trail.. which was alas a bit soft.
A meltdown or too later, once everyone had tire pressures more appropriate to the conditions we made slow but steady progress towards the cabin.
It was warm and sunny, but there was almost no traffic on the trail.
At about 5 miles in I told the twins we had three hills to go. Which to my mind was correct, but set off a lot of argueing about what was a hill and what wasn’t. Apparently I missed lots of little hills in between those “three” hills, and Lizzy offered to make three little piles of snow to ride over so we could then “be there”. Much eye rolling ensued, for once with me doing the eye rolling. While heading up the final big hill to the cabin Molly told me “You can’t understand how tired I am!!”. Many snack breaks and five and half hours later we finally arrived at the cabin.
Moose Creek was still warm from the last visitors, so we quickly had it nice and warm, and even had a pine marten frollicking downhill from the cabin.
The evening was spent snuggling with the dogs..
.. hanging out, eating, and reading. The current “reading aloud” book was by Arther Ransom , with one of the main characters had to be in quarantine while recovering from the mumps. Strangely pertinent to the current times, as we had been reading this book since a bit before the current virus crisis…
The evening went by fast, and everyone hit the sack early – one of the advantages of family bike trips!
In the morning we headed out and enjoyed firmer trails on the way out.
After a stop for ice cream bars at the local convenience store on the drive home, everyone agreed the trips was “ok”. 😀
I was quite impressed by the twins willingness to ride their bikes for nearly six hours on their first winter bike trip ever.
Stay healthy everyone!