Last weekend we finished our bicycle trek from the Sun to Pluto! (You can read about the Dane County Planet Trek Scale Model Solar System and see our path here.) We began at the Sun (also known as the Monona Terrace) last May, and we traveled to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Ceres all in one easy afternoon. Then in early June we biked from Ceres to Jupiter to Saturn (then back to Ceres, where we parked our car). I've already posted about our adventures out to Saturn. Now let me catch you up on the last few planets.
(A note on the outermost planets: They are so far apart! Logistics definitely got more complicated for us as the planets got farther away from each other. Fortunately, we live along the Military Ridge State Park Trail. This trek helped me better understand how far away Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are--much more so than any picture in a book can convey.)
Uranus
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| Mary and Boots (who was safely taped to the handlebars) are ready to find Uranus. |
For the trek to Uranus, we started at Saturn, biked to our house, passing Uranus along the way, and then later that day picked up the car (which we had left near Saturn).
It was a steamy August morning. David was truly our Olympian-in-training! Other riders on the trail even commented to him that he was going fast enough to be in the Olympics. (Meanwhile, Pregnant Mom was bringing up the rear. Pregnant Mom was not in Olympic form.) This was the only leg that required contact with a busy road, and we all survived to see Uranus!
Neptune
One cool evening in August we decided to head for Neptune. We left a car parked for us in teensy, tiny middle-of-nowhere Riley. Then we biked from our house to Riley, passing Neptune along the way. It was a gorgeous evening out in the prairies and rolling farmland.
Mary happily sang songs behind her dad. David, as usual, took the lead.
In fact, he pretty much left us in the dust...
That is, until he had his first major bike wreck. Poor David. He momentarily zoned out just enough to lose control, and he slid across the loose gravel, his bike all tangled in his body. He had some serious road rash--the skin on one of his knees was just gone, with dirt and rocks in its place. We congratulated him on being a real cyclist now! And we assured him that Uncle Andy would be super proud! But it didn't help much. As anyone knows who has slid across dirt, gravel, or asphalt tangled in a bike knows, IT HURTS. He cried and cried and cried the last couple of miles. (It was our longest ride yet, coming in at about eight and a half miles.) We finally made it to the car and the band-aids. David insisted on taking a break from bike riding--he suggested for a couple of years, but we settled on a couple of weeks. Sure enough, he was back on his bike in Door County.
We did see Neptune! (Fortunately, it was before the big crash.)
Pluto
Pluto was the trickiest, logistically. First off, we realized we needed to do the last leg backwards. The ride from Riley, where we had left off last time, to Pluto in Mount Horeb is all uphill. We could do it, but it would be NOT FUN. So we decided to start at Pluto. So, yes, it was a little anti-climatic starting at our final destination. But it made for a very fun bike ride.
On our way to the town of Mount Horeb, where we would start, we dropped off a car in Riley, where we would finish. Then we started at the Mount Horeb Military Ridge State Park Trail Station. (It's really nice with bathrooms and lots of parking.) You can see that the station was designed to reflect Mount Horeb's Norwegian heritage.
Pluto is right across the street from the trail station. (It was a little chilly last weekend--that's why Mary is shivering.)
It was a gorgeous ride! Through forests, wetlands, prairie, farmland. It was my favorite stretch of our trek (and not only because it was all downhill!). I wanted to stop every quarter-mile and take pictures of the beautiful scenery. But when your kids are on a roll, you don't stop them. So just trust me that it was very very lovely!
We did stop a couple of times for minor crises. Like how David was so cold that he borrowed Greg's fleece, which took some doing owing to their different sizes. And how Mary kept getting rocks in her shoes until she finally decided to ride barefoot. But overall it was pleasant and uneventful.
When we got to our car and realized we'd traveled the whole solar system (out to Pluto anyway), we felt very tough, as demonstrated here by Mary...
David felt such a sense of accomplishment, and we are so proud of him! With shorter legs than us grown-ups and a single-speed bike, he had to work harder than anyone. Yay, David!
We locked up the bikes, jumped in the car, drove to Mount Horeb, went to Culver's (because that's what you do in Wisconsin), then picked up the car with the bike racks, so Greg could go get our bikes in Riley and I could go home and take a nap (because that's what you do when you're pregnant).
