Anxious to ride their new toy, the Sitts were eager to spend the day on the trails - and that's exactly what we did. We rode all over the place. Sadly, I neglected to keep up with the blog and, as usual, we neglected to take sufficient pictures, so I can't remember the specifics of the day. Suffice it to say, we had a great time. I do recall a steep descent covered with thick, deep sand and a losing battle with gravity. Imagine that. Fortunately, sand is soft. Mostly. Unless it has rocks in it. Then not so much. We rode most of the trails within the Jericho Mountain State Park boundary (about 80 miles) and decided to head to Gorham to ride the trails there.
As you can see, we never bothered to stop and take pics of the cool parts of the trails nor did we stop to get any "action photos". Why? Well... A) we're usually having too good a time and not thinking about stopping to take pictures and B) if we're on a particularly hairy section of trail, there aren't usually too many opportunities to pull off to the side, park, dismount, and drag out the camera. :D
We rode through town and followed the ATV trail signs to Gorham. We jumped on a section of trail that was super sucky. It paralleled the highway and was basically a point A to point B type of trail (wide, flat double track not unlike the C&O Canal Towpath). The part that made it sucky was that it was nothing but sand and loose gravel so the bikes were floating all over the place and the front wheels would wash out from underneath us every few seconds. Did I mention I hate sand? The Sitts absolutely loved it. They could speed along without fear of being catapulted from their machine and tossed into a tree at high speed. :) The trail popped out in town and we followed the signs to the trailhead. Annoyingly enough, trail bikes were prohibited. Trail bike discrimination irritates me greatly, but I'll spare you my "two-wheel-vs-four-wheel-what-does-the-most-damage?" rant. It was getting late in the day so we decided to start heading back to Berlin. Bill and I weren't interested in riding that sandy section of perpetual-pending-crash again so we took advantage of our street legal machines and took the road back. The Sitts of course had to follow the trail to the section of road where they were permitted to ride. We stopped to get a photo of them crossing the trestle, but I wasn't quick enough and they zipped out of the frame.
We made plans to meet them at a little restaurant in Berlin. On our way, we noticed the Farmer's Market on Main Street was open. Wooohooo! We zipped in and took a stroll by all the vendors. It made me a little sad. I miss vending at Farmer's Markets. :( We picked up some organic Jalapeno Chevre and also bought a jar of Caramel Apple Butter. The cheese was amazing. We would find out later that the Caramel Apple Butter was just as phenomenal. We loaded our purchases into my tailpack and headed to the restaurant. We waited awhile and then texted the Sitts that we were waiting for them in the parking lot. They texted back saying they were at a deli up the road from us. Ooops. We couldn't remember the name of the restaurant and our description of the place wasn't accurate enough to get them there. Since they were already at the deli and didn't want to leave and we were already at the "Valley Creek Eatery", we told them we'd catch them back at the campground.
Dinner was pretty good. I was jonesing for a salad so ordered a strawberry walnut chicken salad with raspberry vinaigrette and Bill ordered a fish sandwich that was surprisingly good. After dinner, we hopped on the bikes and headed back to the campground. I was grateful it was a short trip because it was getting dark and was quite chilly riding in our trail gear (i.e. jersey and chest protector get up). We hung out with the Sitts back at the campground and chatted about our day. The Sitts really seemed to enjoy themselves and Bill, as always, was having an absolute hoot. Aside from that one minor mishap, I too had a really great day. :D
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