September 18 Riding the Skunk Train Bike Rails

Wednesday, September 18 Riding the Skunk Train Bike Rails

I like it here.  My humans let me walk around a lot.  It smells good.  They won’t let me go under the bushes though.  Or under the big house that moves.  Or under anything for that matter.  I try though.

Today is our 42^nd wedding anniversary.  I am not sure how that happens as I am only 27 years old.  We are riding the bike rails of the skunk train.  That is the whole reason we came up this way.  We are told it is a rip off, but we will judge that for ourselves.

I did a short morning walk, then we headed over for our ride.  The skunk train got its name because it used a lot of smelly diesel.  The winds would actually travel faster than the train would, so the smells would permeate the forest long before the train arrived.  We are riding the bike rails.  These are little cars that ride the tracks.  We pedal and manage the ride as an ebike.  There is a driver (Spouse), and a passenger (me).  We can use pedal assist as needed.  There will be seven cars caravaning down the rails.  We are supposed to keep about 5 car lengths distance between the cars.  I don’t know how many times I yelled at Spouse to slow down so we don’t hit the people in front of us.  SLOW DOWN!!!

We start by crossing a few city streets to get to the forest.  Our guides have remotes that bring the railroad crossing bars down.  We give the ‘queen wave’ as we pass the waiting cars.  We both pedal.  We see the people in front of us are totally relying on the throttle.  What wimps!  It is fun to pedal.  As we leave the city, we enter a forest.  The rugged wall to our right is covered in ivy, ferns and nasturtiums.  On our left is a riparian canyon.  We are going downhill, so it is easy to pedal.  It is cold!!!!  We dressed in layers.  There are birch, pines and more pines.  Then there are redwoods.  We are having fun pedaling.  It is pretty weird in that there is a lot of stuff on the tracks, so you would expect to hit the bumps, but you ride right over, with the gentle clanking against the tracks.

We follow the tracks around to a huge pavilion.  Here is where you can have special events that the train brings you to, such as a wedding.  That’s it?  This is as far as we go???  It is only 3 ½ miles?  But, but, but I am just getting started!    We can almost see the collapsed tunnel, that will one day be restored so the ride can go all the way to Willits. One of our guides takes us on a short hike in the woods, with a little history lesson along the way.  It is a beautiful hike through the redwoods, albeit short… just like the bike ride.  The train arrived after we did and let the people off to hike and play.  Lots of games in the pavilion from Jenga with huge wood blocks, to bag tossing, chess, etc. 

We wait until the train leaves so that we can pedal back.  It is slightly uphill, but still pretty easy.  We do our ‘queen wave’ then end the ride.  The guides were good, but it is a lot of money for a little ride!  I am glad we did it as I enjoyed it, but it really is a ripoff!  I am glad Spouse got the ‘military discount’…