The Banks-Vernonia Trail has been mentioned on this list before. It's a 20+ mile rail trail about 30 miles west of Portland, OR. Conveniently it goes through a state park about halfway through.
It seemed to me that an ideal way for my family to see the trail would be as a one-way overnighter with a net elevation loss. My family and I got dropped off in Vernonia, OR on Monday morning with our bicycles and camping gear. My wife had the only Riv among us... her Betty Foy. We spent about 4 hours riding the 11 miles to Stub Stewart State Park near the trail's halfway point. Everyone made it under their own power (my 5 and 6 year olds were on their own bikes). We set up camp and explored the campground. We went to the Star Gazing Program but the flyer we saw was a mis-print, so we went back to our campsite when the ranger/program leader no-showed. We did see the international space station and a shooting star before retiring. In the morning the kids turned in their completed Junior Ranger passports. I was more proud than I imagined I could be at such an accomplishment. After a few pics of the kids with their Junior Ranger patches, we rolled towards Banks. This second half of the trip went a little faster, we covered 10 miles in 3 hours. I'm a huge fan of trips with my buddies where we can go farther, faster and take a little more risk than this entry level adventure. The joy of doing this with my wife and kids is entirely different though. Perhaps trips like this will be the foundation of doing bigger, farther, faster trips with my kids in the future. Or maybe it's enough to enjoy the simple 5 year old accessible adventure for what it is. During the trip my 6 year old asked if she was old enough to get her own pocket knife. Not quite sure she's ready for that round tipped Opinel yet, but I didn't say "no". Pics with captions... http://www.flickr.com/photos/15966859@N07/sets/72157635168005660/ --Andy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
