North Branch Trail

Today was a perfect day for biking - sunny and neither cold nor hot. So we loaded up and went on this year's first family bike ride.

We thought it might be too cool to bike by the lake, so we decided to bike the North Branch Trail. It's long been a favorite trail of mine. We started at Dempster and headed north, Ella on her own bike, Maria on hers, and Martin in the trailer behind me. Ella did a great job. She chugged right up the bridge at East Lake Ave. We got to the lagoons just north of Willow Road and stopped to rest. I expected we would turn around there, but Ella and Maria insisted they wanted to ride on, so we did. We went up to the Botanic Gardens and had lunch, then turned around for the ride back. Ella complained only a couple times but proved she was up to the task. And Martin was content the whole way, and fell asleep on the way back.

I figure now that we biked about 22 miles today. I still think we should have turned around earlier. It really was too far to go for our first ride of the season, but it turned out alright.