Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

by Nancy Sathre-Vogel

  “Look, Nance!” John blurted a few minutes later. His outstretched arm pointed toward the top of a tall, solitary tree near the edge of the water. My eyes followed his arm until I saw it too – a bald eagle perched high in a tree. He sat watching over all of us as though he had been appointed guardian.

  It was one of those incredible moments we never wanted to end: whales frolicking before us in the waves… blackberries at our feet… and a majestic bald eagle presiding over the ceremony. Yes, this is why we’re here. This is why we are taking this journey!

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  I was interviewed by a news reporter this morning because we are riding bikes around America. It is fun being famous. I flew a kite before we left the campground. I saw some whales. They were cool. We ate blackberries. We didn’t eat the purple and red ones because they were sour. We took a ferry into Canada. It was fun on the ferry.

  Love, Davy

  * * *

  The next couple days continued in that perfect mode. The scenery was lovely, cycling was easy and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. We were in the groove and everything was going swimmingly. Until we got separated.

  I sat in Humptulips wondering what could have happened to John and the boys. I waited. And waited. And waited some more. It just didn’t make sense – they were only one minute ahead of me. Sixty seconds – and then they disappeared.

  “We’ll meet at Humptulips if not before, ‘kay?” John had shouted as he pulled out of the campsite.

  “That’s fine,” I called back. “I just need to strap on the tent and I’ll be on my way.”

  It was only a minute or so before I jumped on my bike and headed out to catch up to John and the boys. I pedaled fast knowing they would be going slowly waiting for me.

  Hmmm... I thought a couple miles later. This isn’t like them. They don’t generally go this fast. I should have caught them by now. I kept pumping, trying to catch up.

  It started to rain. I pushed on. And all of a sudden there I was – in downtown Humptulips. Alone.

  Now I’ve never claimed to be the brightest person walking the face of the earth, but I’m not the dumbest either. I had just cycled the entire length of that road and the boys weren’t there. I knew they weren’t behind me. Which meant, of course, that they had to be ahead of me. But I was where we were supposed to meet, and they weren’t. I suppose they could have gone right by, I thought. After all, it is a pretty small town and it would be fairly easy to miss if you were going fast.

  “Did you happen to see a great big bicycle built for three up there?” I asked drivers as they pulled up to the gas station I was waiting at.

  Time after time, I got a negative response. “No – can’t say I did!” they each told me.

  My boys had vanished. Disappeared. Fallen off the face of the earth. Not even my SuperMom powers could bring them back – that only worked if I knew where they were to begin with. I sat down to consider all the options. They weren’t ahead of me – I had asked numerous drivers and surely someone would have seen that massive machine lumbering along the highway. They weren’t behind me – I would have had to pass them to get here. Could they have taken a wrong turn? There weren’t any turns. Could they have stopped for a break? I would have seen them. Or would I? I suppose they could have gone off the road and I zoomed past not seeing them. It was worth a try.

  I flagged down a car coming from the direction I had just ridden.

  “Yeah, I saw some great big thing – wasn’t exactly sure what it was,” he replied. “But I did notice a man and two kids sitting on the side of the road about three miles back.”

  What the heck? Was it some kind of magic trick? Had they disappeared, only to reappear after I had already passed? I sent a message back with another motorist.

  “Where were you?” John shouted when he finally approached the gas station in Humptulips. “We sat by the side of the road waiting for ages! We went really slowly and finally stopped altogether. We were afraid you had trouble with your bike or had gotten sick or something!”

  We continued on our way, pondering the mystery of somehow missing each other on that narrow strip of shoulder on the side of the road.

  “I got it!” I shouted some twenty minutes later. “Way back at the campground – when you were first heading out to the highway – did you go right or left?”

  John looked at me like I was nuts. “I went back the same way we came in.”

  “That’s it! That’s where it all happened!” I explained. “There was a ‘Y’ back there – just a few hundred feet from the campsite. It said to go left for Highway 101 South, so I went left. But yesterday we came from the north so came in on the other branch of the Y. I bet that’s where it happened – I got ahead of you in the first couple minutes of the day!”

  The mystery of ships passing in the middle of the night was solved.

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  This is the 42nd day of the trip. I had a running race with Dad to the outhouse in the campground. We made an explosion by pouring stove fuel on paper and lighting it on fire. Mommy passed us on the road today and we didn’t know it. We thought she was in trouble. We found her later. We rode in the rain and got soaked.

  Love, Davy

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before John and I became obsessed with making miles. Maybe that was because we hadn’t made any for so long – the Oregon coast just wouldn’t let us go. After those first few weeks where we cycled like mad, our pace had slowed to a creep.

  It seemed like each and every time we started pedaling something popped up to demand that we stop. We climbed sand dunes, played on beaches, and toured cheese factories. We hiked to the top of mountains and picked blackberries by the water bottleful. It was life in the slow lane – the very slow lane. After ten twenty-mile days along the coast, John and I decided we need to pick up the pace. Sure, we were out to play and have fun, but we also wanted to see more that year than just the Oregon coast.

  We were cruising along and saw a sign: Yaquina Lighthouse.

  “Wanna go see a lighthouse, Nancy?” John called back to me as I pedaled behind him.

  I made a split-second decision and called back. “Nah. Let’s skip it. We’ve seen enough lighthouses.”

  “I wanna go!” whined Daryl.

  “Me too!” added Davy.

  No amount of coaxing or cajoling could talk them out of it.

  We turned the corner and headed toward the coastline. As it turned out, that road to the lighthouse was like the yellow brick road taking us to incredible and extraordinary places. The Land of Oz couldn’t hold a candle to that area, no matter how incredible it might be. The old lighthouse we thought we were going to visit was pretty neat indeed, but the rocks it warned of were even better.

  We were entertained for hours by sea stars, sea urchins, and other marine life in tide pools.

  “Look!” the kids shouted as they climbed down the rock face to the tide pools. John and I gathered with the boys as we marveled at a dozen starfish clinging to a rock face.

  A second later the kids were off and running. “Mom! Come over here! These are really cool!” I clamored over more rocks until I stood by my boys gazing at an underwater fantasy land filled with sea anemones blooming like bizarre underwater flowers.

  “Ooh – these look nasty!” Daryl exclaimed when they found a patch of sea urchins with needlelike spines threatening to pierce their shoes should they fall in.

  From rock to rock the kids leaped, discovering more treasures in each tide pool. Each rock revealed its own mysteries – special formations or sea creatures my boys had never seen before.

  All too soon, the tide began to come in and we were forced off the rocks. Somewhere I could almost hear Dorothy clicking her heels, wanting to go home. But I didn’t want to leave my own personal Land of Oz.

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  We went to a lighthouse. It was fun. I saw a sea anemone, sea ur
chin, sunflower sea star, starfish, and a big red sea urchin. We touched the inside of a sea anemone. It was sticky and closed its mouth. The sunflower sea star had twenty four legs! All of the sea urchins were purple except the red one. Sea anemones are green. The sea urchins had sharp spines. I found almost all the cool stuff. Two boys fell in the water. I bet they were cold and hurt. My foot fell in the water. It was cold.

  Love, Daryl

  * * *

  Slowly we made our way toward the California border. Oregon was wonderful, but we were excited about all California had to offer. Exactly two months after we pulled out of our driveway we crossed into our fourth state. The boys were giddy with excitement at the thought that they made it – they had pedaled well over a thousand miles and had entered California at last. I couldn't wait to explore the redwoods and the wonderful state parks California is known for. I went to bed with a smile on my face – we had arrived.

  Rerouted for Love

  What was it the Byrds sang about? To everything (turn, turn turn)… There is a season (turn, turn, turn)… And a time for every purpose under heaven…

  There comes a time for everything. A time to be a wife. A time to be a mother. And a time to be a daughter. After two months on the road, the time came for me to leave my husband and sons to be a daughter. My mother called and I needed to go home.

  Just a few days before we departed on our journey, my mother had been diagnosed with cancer. We batted all possibilities around – cancel the trip, postpone it, go anyway. In the end, we opted for the latter, knowing the time might come when one or more of us would be needed at home. That time came just after we crossed the border into California, and I rented a car to drive to Boise.

  John spent the day reorganizing and repacking, trying to fit everything on one bike. All that gear – that mountain of equipment – needed to be stashed, buckled or tied onto the triple. Everything he could possibly ditch was put in the rental car. The four of us quietly hung around the hotel room, putting off the moment of departure. We knew it would be tough. I wanted more than anything to be with them. And yet, I needed to be home with Mom. If only… if only I could figure out a way to do it all. But I knew, and John knew, and the kids knew, that just wasn’t possible.

  “We promise to take care of Daddy,” the kids told me. “We’ll help him a lot!”

  “Take care of my boys,” I pleaded John. “I’ll miss you so.”

  And with that, I started the car and drove away, leaving a part of my heart behind.

  The first few days of their male bonding time was spent cycling through the mighty redwoods. Their bike, as massive as it was, seemed small and insignificant in comparison to the gigantic trees towering on either side of the road. As my boys (all three of them) made their way into the fog-shrouded depths of the redwood forest, 300-foot-tall trees towered above them on either side of the road and, as large as it was, their bike was dwarfed by the magnificence of the trees.

  “You should’ve seen it, Mom!” Davy told me one evening on the telephone. “We hiked to Corkscrew Tree today! It’s a great big redwood tree that’s all twisted and mangled. It was so cool! And we also hiked to see Big Tree. That’s a really old tree. They say it’s 1500 years old! And it is 304 feet tall – can you imagine that? It’s huge!”

  “But that’s not the best part, Mom,” added Daryl. “We also rode through the Yurok Reservation and they were having a salmon festival. Daddy bought us a great big chunk of salmon that was roasting over the fire right by the side of the road. It was so good!”

  Daryl enjoyed smoked salmon at the salmon festival on the Yurok Reservation.

  I sat at home in Idaho, wishing I could be on the California coast with my husband and children. I remembered visiting northern California as a child and seeing the enormous redwood trees and precipitous cliffs along Highway 1. Those images stayed with me my whole life, and I couldn’t wait to take my own children there. Instead, I was relegated to hearing their tales over the phone line and seeing their photos on the internet. It wasn’t the same, but I could feel the excitement in the boys’ voices as they proclaimed their wonder at some of the very sights I remembered so vividly from my own childhood. I felt like I could almost get a glimpse of the redwood forest and spectacular ocean views through my children’s eyes.

  The boys were having the time of their life. Every day brought new adventures, and Mother Nature was at her best. One morning they were trapped in their campsite by a group of elk on the road. Unable to pass by, they simply sat on the side of the road admiring the magnificent animals until the path was clear. They took advantage of the Redwoods National Park’s Junior Ranger program to learn about banana slugs. They discovered many state parks where they found water holes and spent delightful hours swimming and playing. In short, they had discovered heaven.

  Mom and I kept up with their adventures through our online journal and evening phone calls. Mom had suffered a terrible reaction to her chemotherapy and nearly died, but was now recovering and gaining strength. We enjoyed following along with the boys as they traveled.

  As the trio worked their way south along the coast they took advantage of the many state parks California had to offer.

  “Hey, Mom!” Daryl chattered excitedly into the telephone. “We’re at MacKerricher State Park – and this place is wonderful! There are so many places to play. Today we played in the tide pools. I stuck my finger in a sea anemone and it closed up around it – it was really gooshy!”

  “Tomorrow we’ll climb some sand dunes and play on the beach and take a hike into the forest. We’re having a lot of fun, Mom!” Davy added.

  A few days later the boys went hiking in the Pygmy Forest in Van Damme State Park. They marveled at the mature, cone-bearing cypress and pine trees which stood anywhere from six inches to eight feet tall.

  “Do you know how the Pygmy Forest happened, Mom?” the boys asked me that night. I admitted that not only did I not know how it happened, I had never even heard of its existence.

  “We took a long hike out in the Pygmy Forest and learned a lot about it. And we got lost, so we spent more time there than we had planned, but it’s a really interesting place. They said the trees are stunted because there’s something about the water under the ground and strange soils that don’t let the trees grow like normal. The trees are tiny, but they are really old. They say they can be hundreds of years old!”

  The boys were fascinated by the stunted trees in the pygmy forest. They were stunted due to the unique physical conditions in the area.

  In the mornings my boys were enveloped in thick fog as they pedaled along sheer cliffs high over the Pacific Ocean. By late mornings, the sun had burned the fog away and the three adventurers were rewarded with spectacular views of the sparkling waters far below them.

  Those spectacular views, however, came at a price. As the highway snaked its way along the coastline it climbed thousands of feet toward the heavens only to plummet back down again. The boys ground up massive hill after massive hill, becoming more and more weary.

  The constant climbing and descending along the California coast exhausted us.

  “I’m exhausted,” John told me one night on the phone. “We just now arrived into a campground. I haven’t cooked dinner yet, nor set up the tent. We just pulled in – it took us all day to pedal a mere forty miles. All that extra weight on the bike really makes a difference. I don't know if I can do this, Nance. I'm wiped out.”

  * * *

  Dear Mommy and Grandma,

  Do you know why redwoods are called redwoods? It is because they have red wood. When I look at them they are grey, but when you break off the bark it is red. This is because the outside gets weathered. We went swimming in a swimming hole. It is getting hot because we are going away from the ocean.

  Love, Daryl

  * * *

  Dear Mommy and Grandma,

  We went on a hike in the pygmy forest. We turned the wrong direction and had to walk a long way until we found that out. Dar
yl and Daddy had a big pine cone fight. I was the judge. It was a tie. Today we were along the coast and there was a huge cliff by the side of the road. It was so dangerous that everyone was scared.

  Love, Davy

  * * *

  Within a couple weeks the group had settled into a rhythm. It took John ninety minutes every morning to get the boys up and fed, the tent stowed, and the bike packed. Riding all day was tough, but they slowed down their daily mileage and took advantage of other activities the California coast had for them.

  My mom and I also settled into a routine – a routine that consisted of doctor’s appointments and waiting for phone calls from John. We checked the online journal every hour, hoping for an update. Although all was going well with the boys, we both knew we were pushing our luck. One adult with two boys alone on the road was a situation asking for trouble.

  And trouble came the day they pulled into Santa Cruz.

  “You wouldn’t believe what happened yesterday,” John complained on the phone the next morning. “We were doing really well – we knocked off sixty miles quick and easy with an unbelievable tailwind! We figured we were in for a great evening hanging out around the campfire.”

  “But then everything changed. We were only six miles from the campground, but ended up with a flat tire. You know how it is, Nancy. The rear tire on the triple is such a pain to fix, so I decided to just pump it up and try to make it to the campground. But then I noticed the tarp was gone – it had fallen off the trailer.”