While we were mountain biking at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Minneapolis, we started chatting with a woman who was there with her niece and nephew. She is an avid mountain biker and gave us a few other places in the state that had good trails. On our trek north, we ended up doing some service for natural disaster clean up near Brainerd, which put us darn close to the Cuyuna County State Recreation Area she had mentioned.

We took a chance that the campground was decent (and had an open spot) and drove over in the late afternoon. While the campground wasn’t much to look at (and Sam warned me to definitely NOT look in the bathrooms) it was smack dab in the middle of a trail system. This is great because we have become extremely lazy and prefer to ride right from camp rather than driving someplace and then unloading the bikes.

We tested out a small section of trail with the kids our first evening, and even though they whined a bit, Rachel actually rode it again with Sam after we switched bikes (it was a much better ride on the 29er over the cyclo cross). The following day they weren’t interested in riding at all, so I snuck away in the afternoon to test out ALL the rest of the trails. Okay, I didn’t expect to ride them ALL but I was sure going to try.

The trails were awesome. The system consists of a series of networked trails that create quite a few loops. Some with pretty significant climbs, rollings hills or speedy downhill runs. I rode about 12 miles in just over two hours and when I texted Sam and asked how things were going and if I could do one more loop, he immediately responded with, “Go get ’em!”

I seriously love my husband.

While riding solo is definitely not ideal in case something drastic happens, its better than not riding at all. While at our sticks and bricks house, I would often not do an activity because I had no one to go with. It just didn’t seem fun or feasible. Now, however, I’ve learned that some alone time on the trails is not necessarily a bad thing jump at the chance to get out. Traveling has created more opportunities to get out and enjoy the sports I love!