The Route of the Hiawatha Bike Trail

A couple of weeks ago, my husband, my Dad and I went up to Idaho (and Montana) and rode The Route of the Hiawatha Bike Trail.  It was SO much fun and a very beautiful ride.

The trail opens at 8:30 AM and we were pretty much the first ones to set out, although there were several others not far behind us.  It was a little foggy as we got started.  You start out in Montana and end up in Idaho.

The 15 mile long trail is an old railroad route with ten train tunnels and 7 sky high trestle bridges.  The first tunnel is over a mile and a half long and never gets above 42 degrees.  You need lights on your bike and Mike got us head lamps as well, which I really liked because then everywhere I looked I could see!

I wore my headlamp the whole time because I wanted to be prepared for every tunnel!  Some tunnels were short and you could "see the light at the end of the tunnel" even when you entered, but many were long and we were in complete darkness as we rode along! I kept hoping there were no bats - didn't see any!

Here is the entrance to one of the tunnels.

The scenery was gorgeous!

My Dad on one of the trestle bridges.

Mike on one of the bridges with another of the bridges in the distance behind him - you can see how high they are.

I wondered if we would see any wildlife and we did - a LOT of chipmunks!

The trail is dirt but you can see it's pretty flat.

Still rocking the headlamp, even though everyone else has ditched theirs by now :)

At the end of the trail, we met up with the shuttle bus which shuttled us back to the first tunnel, then we had to ride back through that mile and a half tunnel to get back to the car.  It seemed longer the second time for some reason - maybe because we were going up hill!

Horrible picture of me,  but they've taken out seats in the back of an old school bus to hang bikes.  Frankly, the bus ride was the scariest part of the whole trip!  I  guess it wasn't that bad, but if I do it again I won't be sitting in the front, or on the right side....

But if I hadn't been sitting in the front, on the right side, I would have missed seeing the moose!

This picture should have been first.  The night before the ride we stayed in the little town of Wallace, Idaho and ate a great breakfast there before heading out to the trail head in Montana.

It was a ton of fun - we all enjoyed it!  Thanks to Mike for planning the trip and if you want to check out this trail yourself you can read more about it at:
http://www.ridethehiawatha.com