Don't Forget Your Bike
Having your bike along while traveling opens up new opportunities
In Mission: Wanderlust, I write and podcast about our family’s travel adventures and the things that we have learned along the way.
For some, vacation means a lot of rest of relaxation.
For me, it means exploring and physical activity.
I’ve written before about my inability to relax on vacation, but there is just so much to see and do.
And we’ve discovered that one of the best ways to make sure we have all options available to us is to take our bikes along on every major road trip. As a family that now travels with a travel trailer 90% of the time, it does make sense that we would have them with us all of the time “just in case.” But we’ve discovered that they are an ideal option for sightseeing and transportation even when we aren’t trying to easily travel around a campground or get some quick exercise on a trail.
The first time we discovered the beauty of having bicycles around was on a non-camping trip to Washington D.C. long before we had kids. I had been at a conference for my first trip ever to the nation’s capitol and while I learned, my husband explored. On our last day in the city, the only day I had to do “all the things,” we decided to spend our time exploring the Mall and all of the monuments along the Mall.
It was a hot June day following several days of rain. Suddenly the bikes that we had dragged all the way from Indiana seemed like a good idea. We took our bikes on the train from where we were staying in Maryland, hopped on them as soon as we were at the Mall, and visited every single memorial on the Mall in a matter of two hours. We breezed past tourists dragging tired feet, well aware that our two-hour tour was going to take them at least four hours in the steamy heat. We will forever argue that it is the best way to see all of the memorials in one day in D.C.
On that same trip, we decided to brave a tougher ride by tackling the hills at Valley Forge as we headed home to Indiana from our two-night stop in Philadelphia. Once again we discovered that the bikes afforded us the freedom to explore that our car did not. We could more easily stop anywhere we wanted, see what we wanted to see, and avoid finding parking at different stops. While the hills proved to be challenging for two people who were far more out of shape than two 20-somethings should have been, we still enjoyed it enough that when we discussed our 2013 trip to Gettysburg, we decided that we needed to bike the battlefields.
By 2013 we were parents in our 30s and in surprisingly better shape than we had been when we attempted Valley Forge. Biking the sixteen miles of battlefields and sites around the town of Gettysburg gave us the opportunity to stop where we wanted to stop, avoid getting stuck in car traffic, and proudly proclaim that we had survived the ride in steamy 90+ degree heat. While Little Round Top nearly conquered me (it was the only stop that I had to give up and walk my bike to), we loved riding our bikes around the national park.
This past summer we introduced the idea to our kids as well, encouraging them to attempt riding around Gettysburg (we only rode our bikes to a couple of the stops but we still could say that we did it) and riding the newish trails at Valley Forge, trails which allowed us to safely explore the park without fear of vehicles potentially cutting our family off from each other. Our kids weren’t quite ready for the hills, but we were proud of them for completing everything but the side trip to Washington’s Headquarters.
There are a lot of reasons to consider exploring on a bike while on vacation. It’s good exercise and typically less strenuous than walking. It gives you different freedoms than driving a car everywhere and you don’t have to worry about finding parking. You don’t have to follow a tour group if you’re concerned about driving traffic and can go at your own pace. It is better for the environment and serves as an example for other tourists to follow, giving them permission to also try biking over driving their car to every point of interest. And with the invention of e-bikes, it doesn’t even have to be that strenuous, if you have the finances to buy one or you want to rent one on location. (Valley Forge National Historic Park is a pretty popular biking location and there were two different bike rental vendors, one of them exclusively renting e-bikes while we were there in the summer of 2022.)
So on your next vacation, consider all of the possibilities that a bicycle could offer you. It will add a whole new dimension to your explorations.
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