I get a great night of sleep due to what I assume is because the dehumidifier staying on all night. I go to sleep, and sleep all night. Feels great as opposed to the night before when I woke up a bunch of times.
We pack up pretty early and hit the road by 8:30. We have no more business here so it’s time to end this leg and start the next.
We meet up at the Kingdom Trails Visitor Center at 10:00 with Utah & Ryan. We’re a bit ahead of them so we head into the center to get our yearly pass and look for some shirt to buy. We also get the info on any new trails that have been built. Unfortunately there’s not really much since last October but that doesn’t change much in terms of our expectations on the week.
We do the loop behind the tiki bar which has 1 of the few new trails in the system. Neither D nor I had done the loop before so it’s sort of a 2-new trail for us. Nothing much up there is worth it but it’s not awful. They’re trails. It’s dirt. We’re at Kingdom.
We head up & over the hill and hit NewT which is a little better but still a bit janky. The turn radius on many of the berms are super tight and the flow is ok, not great. Maybe overall the trail is better than last year but it’s still not great. Good not great.
We head over and do Hogback, Piggy Back, Hogback, then Sidewinder. Sidewinder is probably in the nest shape I have seen it in a while and it runs really well. Good stuff and we climb up & out of the hole to the Lemonade Stand. We love the Lemonade Stand.
Sadly, the Lemonade Stand is gone. The building has been removed and there is a mock gravestone there. Sad days. But we still take this opportunity to take a break and have a sandwich. Food is important.
While taking a break Brian & his crew roll over and say hi. We talk to them for a while then we all roll out our separate ways. Brian will join us later at the house so we’ll catch up then.
We head up to the road and go to Heaven’s Bench where we take pics and wait for Dan to join us. In a few minutes he finds us and we roll down to Ridge & Rim which is a great run.
We climb out of the hole we’ve ridden ourselves in by doing Culver’s Cut then Jaw then Ridge and up Heaven’s Bench Climb. This is a huge hole now that the plot of land is off-limits. We then take a lot of road to get back down to hit Kitchel to end the ride. This is also in great shape.
In all we rode 19 miles in 2.5 hours. The Strava link can be found here.
Then we get ice cream because ice cream is awesome.
We head to the house from town to figure out who is sleeping where, and everyone comes in with their stuff. This is the usual first day stuff and we are all trying to figure out the logistics of the house.
We also shower which is awesome because it was a brutal humid day.
Dinner is on Iggy and like always he makes pulled pork. This is probably the 6th or 7th year in a row he’s done that. This year seems better than usual however.
It’s another great day and even though the team trip has just started, our vacation is only just halfway over today.
Traveling Normandy 