Our Past Tents

This is a multi-part trip report. If you haven’t already, you should start at the beginning. Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Click here to see todays route map.

For a hundred reasons, today does not start as planned. We sleep later than we’d intended, and don’t leave the house until about eight.

By nine, we’ve bought new allergy medicine for me, lots of snacks for the trail, and a bizarre breakfast.  Walgreens shopping excursion complete, we eat breakfast on the benches outside. Continue reading “Katy Trip Day 2 (St. Charles – Marthasville)”

This is a multi-part trip report. If you haven’t already, you should start at the beginning. Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Click here to see a map of todays travels.

The train’s late. I think the train’s always late. I’ve been sick all week, with a sinus infection, or allergies, or SOMEthing. We skip supper because all the drive thrus between our house and Little Rock have lines about eight miles long. We get to the station in plenty of time tonight, though, and box up our bikes and sit in the old station, waiting.

Later, we settle into the lower coach of the quietly sleeping, nearly-full train. Bryan’s in a window seat next to a person-shaped blanket. Mandy’s on the aisle next to a grandmotherly-looking older woman who snores loudly. My seatmate is a middle aged woman with a half-full catheter bag. There’s something very wrong with her, though we can’t really have a conversation about it – her speech is garbled and confused. I move carefully as I doze, afraid to hurt her. But in the night, when my sleeping bag falls from my shoulder, I feel her pull it up and tuck it in around me.
Continue reading “Katy Trip Day 1 (Home – St. Charles)”

This summer, Mandy switched around her visit to Tulsa so that she could go to her Audubon camp.  That shifted the time we could set aside for a family vacation from super-hot early August to hopefully-nicer early June.

As a teenager, I rode parts of the Katy Trail in Missouri.  It’s about 250 miles of mostly-flat packed limestone gravel, running from St. Charles (just west of St. Louis) all the way across the state to Clinton, Missouri.  We’ve been wanting to ride the whole length of the trail as a family.  An early-June vacation seemed like a good time to give it a try.

Here’s a link to a map of the trail.

We bought a guidebook to the trail way back last year, and had been daydreaming over it ever since.  The Katy is the longest rail-trail in the US!  A landmark state park system!  With friendly little towns and ice cream shops and cyclist-centered campgrounds all along the way!  And historical thingamajigs!  All just one state north of us.

To make the trip a little more challenging (and fun), we decided to leave the car in Little Rock and do the whole eight-day vacation using alternative transportation.  We pieced together a route using mostly Amtrak, but also the public transit buses and light rail in St. Louis.  And, of course, the touring bikes.  It’ll be the longest trip any of us have ever taken by bike, and we’ll be doing it together.  With stops for ice cream.