Riding the Hiawatha Trail

I'd been watching the weather for days and of course the weather on the day we were slated to go for our bike ride had a chance of rain.  But when we woke up, it was pouring outside!  I even sat there and pondered skipping the ride entirely in favor of doing it the next day, early, and then driving back to Salem.  Fortunately, the twins vetoed that idea.  So we decided to brave the weather.  We packed up our lunch that we had bought the day before and drove a few miles from where we were staying in Mullan, Idaho up to Lookout Pass on the ID-MT border.  This is where we bought our passes to ride the trail.  From there we dropped down off the mountain and into Montana, but then took an exit and headed up Rainy Creek to the East Portal of the Taft Tunnel under Saint Paul Pass, again on the ID-MT border.

We unloaded our bikes and decided to have lunch rather than pack food and trash all day.  The weather was on-again, off-again rain showers.  Just as we finished lunch, it started raining and we put on our rain gear and then started pedaling.  The first 1.6 miles are all underground, going through the old Taft Railroad Tunnel.  Headlights are required of everyone.  Riding in a tunnel on slippery ground was a really weird feeling - especially since there were so many other riders since it was the trailhead and crowds hadn't thinned out yet.  There was just barely enough side-by-side room to pass, but only if the rider you were passing scooted over which most folks didn't do because on either side was a gutter to drain water.  Regardless, we got through to the other side and re-assessed the rain gear because it wasn't raining on the Idaho side.

From there, we started biking down the Cliff Creek drainage.  Beautiful and dramatic views and neat lighting as the sun poked out from behind storm clouds and lit up all the rain on the trees.  Eventually, the trail turns up the Loop Creek drainage although the trail continues to gradually drop in elevation since it's an old, converted railroad grade.  We went through a couple more tunnels - much shorter than two miles - and a few trestles over Barnes, Kelly, Manhattan, and eventually Loop Creek itself.

About that time, another rain squall was blowing in, but the timing was perfect, because we went in to a tunnel on the trail and just hung out for 15 minutes or so while it poured down rain.  We rode for a bit more, but then another rain squall blew in, but again, we had another tunnel to hang out in.  In this tunnel, Zephyr found a little frog.  Also, just before we entered the tunnel, we passed three deer on the side of the trail.  As we were waiting on the other side of the tunnel for the rain to stop with a few other people, we all of a sudden heard footsteps in the tunnel behind us and the deer came trotting out.  All the people stood aside and the wary deer hesitated, but then bolted through.

The deer didn't get far, as he stopped to munch on grass.  About that time the rain stopped and we took off on our bikes again.  We stopped on the Turkey Creek Trestle to take some pictures and get a drink of water and again, we heard the deer come trotting up behind us.  Again, he warily bolted past us.  I can't hardly blame him because the trestle is 146 feet tall and 230 feet long and I wouldn't have wanted to climb down through the bushes, cross a stream, and then hiked up the other side in the bushes!

We continued riding down the Loop Creek drainage and eventually got to the Pearson Trailhead which was the end of the line for us and where we boarded a bus and loaded our bikes for ride back up the mountain to the Taft Tunnel where, again, we had to ride through the tunnel.  We popped out the other side and back into Montana.  Here's where it gets good: we got to the car, tossed our bags in the back of the car, closed the hatch, and I started loading up bikes.  But what I realized too late was that I had put my car keys in my pack so I wouldn't lose them on the bike ride.  And then I placed my backpack in the car and closed the back hatch without unlocking the car.  Yes, it's a poor design feature, but irregardless, we were now locked out of the car.  We had cell phones, but no service.  I walked to the trailhead to ask if there was a radio.  There wasn't.  And the folks at the trailhead all said that even if I could get through to someone, the nearest locksmith was in Coeur d'Alene, over an hour away and it was now after hours and would cost hundreds of dollars assuming you could even find someone willing to come out.  So I rationalized that for a few hundred bucks, I could break a window and get it replaced.  So I grabbed a boulder and a brick that I found in the parking lot and walked back to the car.  By this time, Zephyr was starting to get stressed out.  I tried smashing and hurling this boulder at the car window, but barely left a scratch!  At this point, I started asking random people if they had implements to break into a car.  I tried a tire iron, an emergency window breaker, and a hammer, but couldn't break the window!  Finally, a guy came over and explained that in order to break a window, you have to hit a certain spot (I don't want to know how he knew this).  So he took the hammer and smacked a certain spot in the window and sure enough, it exploded.  By this point, Zephyr was sobbing.  I cleaned up the glass as best I could and got out of there.  We drove home without a window.  Fortunately, back at our Air BnB, there was a shop-vac I could use.  I got the car good and cleaned up and started looking for the nearest Safelite.  There was one in Coeur d'Alene, but they didn't have any available appointments, but Spokane Valley did!  They said to drop the car off in a four hour time block, but I wanted to be in the door the second they opened.  The next morning, we packed up and took off and got to Spokane Valley just before Safelite opened.  They said they could only guarantee that the work would get done within the day, but after hearing that I had to drive all the way to Salem, they promised to try and get it done as quickly as possible.  So I caught a Lyft into town and got breakfast with the twins.  And by the time we got back, the window was replaced and we were able to continue on our trip home which was fortunately, uneventful.