Day 2: Bethseda to Leesburg, VA

The first three are the hardest. The first three days of a bike trip, a backpacking trip, the first three miles of a half marathon. (I figured that one out when I started doing longer distances than 5ks, and realized that the 5k *was* the warm up- the 2nd half of a 10k just felt so much better.)
When the kids did their longest training ride to the Hotel Del Coronado down the Silver Strand, they hit their stride around mile 9, 10, 11, 12. They could go forever. Same with yesterday- once we finally hit mile 10, the next 5 miles to our lunch stop just flew by.
This, of course, was not how the entire ride went. By the numbers, we had an actual time moving of 5 hours. We started our day about 8:30, and got off White's Ferry at 5pm.
There were more "This is the best trip EVER!" exclamations than "this is the worst trip ever". There was a few comments such as, "I am never riding a bike ever again" followed soon after of, "Can my next bike have handlebars like yours?"
At the end of the day, it was 30 miles total, which was a few more than I anticipated in my mapping, and that was significant. It was a long day. I'm really glad I had the Towwhee strap, it raised spirits more than actually assisted their riding. I only brought one, thinking taking turns would be okay, but as I'm typing Mike is making up a similar bungee strap out of a found piece of webbing and some elastic cord.
Eryn thought Mike towed her too fast, so rather than speaking up, she just used one brake the whole time.
Highlights:
- Bryan looking for the fairies at the ferry landing.
- Eryn taking some really neat pictures of water-laden spiderwebs.
- Eryn walking slowly and quietly to get a good picture of a deer.
- "Puddle Power", a game they made up in which they got energy from riding through a puddle. Needless to say, they were wet the entire time.
- Taking the shuttle to the Best Western from the ferry landing.
- Singing really does make the time go by.
- The Towwhee.
Challenges:
 - Took off Eryn's rack and bags. She's riding much better without them.
- Sudden downpours of a lot of rain. Followed by trees dripping.
- homesickness still hits occasionally.
Recommendations:
- the hiker-bike camps are pretty nice, and very frequent, but as a group of 5, we would need a really large tent or 2 medium tents, and that's a lot of wet gear to deal with. If it were just two of us, me and one kid, then maybe we'd camp more.
- the hotels have been fully booked, I'm really glad I made all of our reservations un March.