Looking back through my 2025 posts in preparation for my “year in review” post, I realized that I never wrote about our rail riding trip in August!
For Tyla’s birthday adventure, we checked out Vance Creek Railriders. They have a stretch of tracks and custom built pedal powered train carts. Each cart can hold up to four people and you better be ready to pedal because it’s a workout!
The trip away from the home base goes pretty quickly because there are large stretches that are slightly downhill. We probably got going ~20-25 mph at points, but of course, all that fun downhill was just future work for us.
At the turnaround point, they had a special contraption for flipping the carts around while we had the option of visiting the port-a-potty.
Coming back was significantly harder, and it was made worse by the group towards the front that seemed to take pedaling as an optional part of the trip. It sort of was optional because the cart in the back had a small engine on it, but there was no way it could push the dozen or so carts up the hills so we all still had to pedal.
I don’t think any of us are itching to do this every weekend, but it was definitely a fun experience that we’re all glad we tried.