Riding the Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails with Kids

We love to go bicycle riding. We have been wanting to go on a date bike ride for awhile, but something always comes up. You know how it is?!

This weekend, we decided to take the entire family for a bicycle ride on the Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails. We had another event we wanted to attend up in that area, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so! Plus it is only about 20 minute from Ephrata or 40 minutes from Lancaster city!

Research Online Before You Go

We visited the Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails website. We thought it would be fun to ride and then at the end of the ride, surprise the kids by stopping at the Jigger Shop for ice cream! As we looked at the map, it seemed a little far to start at the Root Beer Barrel and ride over to Mt. Gretna with our small children (ages 2, 4 and 6), but we wanted to try it anyway!
We checked the elevation and the grade of the trail on Google Maps to see what would work best for our family. We wanted to make sure they had enough energy to end the trip well. We were excited to find that the last part of that trip would be downhill!
We couldn’t remember how far our kids would ride until they hit their break point, so we mapped the trail on Google to determine the distance. Then we mapped the distance of the Ephrata Rails to Trails that we did a few weeks ago. We determined that we thought our kids could easily do a 4 mile bike ride, with breaks and snacks of course.

Have the Kids Help Prepare for Your Ride

The morning of our ride, we told the kids what we were doing. They were so excited!

It always helps to get them involved and give them ownership in your family’s chores and your fun outings. We had our kids help prepare lunches, water bottles, and snacks. They also helped load the car with helmets, bicycles, and backpacks.

My six-year old made everyone peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, our four-year-old filled the water bottles, and my two-year-old did quick errands to go get me diapers or whatever else I needed in the house (or he just played). He’s two – so that’s ok! 🙂

We filled ourselves with a healthy and hearty breakfast of egg, ham and cheese sandwiches, orange juice, fresh fruit and sausage links. I always feel the worst thing on a trip is if someone says “I’m hungry” only a few minutes after you leave. So I tried as hard as I could to avoid this, and it worked!

Where to Arrive at the Trails & What to Expect

We parked at the Root Beer Barrel. It is a nice size parking lot, and has a porta-pot, which is a necessity with kids before you start your ride! After everyone took their turn, and put on their helmets, we set off for our ride.

To be honest, we had a little bit of a hiccup as we were putting the helmets on. It was easy to tell that the Dora helmet was my daughter’s, but we got the Hot Wheels helmet and the Spiderman helmets mixed up. So, we got it resolved as to who was whose, and then we were off! Maybe if we get them unique and memorable helmets like these, we won’t get them mixed up next time. 🙂

We started the ride very strong. I couldn’t believe how fast my kids could ride! Even my four-year-old with her training wheels thought it was a breeze and was hard to keep up with at times.

I thought the trail would all be paved, but it wasn’t. That didn’t seem to hold the kids back though!

You can see the gravel in this photo. It was really easy to ride on.

By the way, I highly recommend getting one of these Roswheel Cell Phone Bags for your bicycle. This made it very easy to keep my cell phone accessible, if I needed to check the time or wanted to quickly stop and take a photo. The best part is, you can find them on Amazon for as low as $.01 plus shipping!

You headed east on the trail, but when we turned around and came back we went a little west past the Root Beer Barrel and enjoyed this beautiful bridge experience!

We felt everything was clearly marked and labeled. Very safe to travel with a family and kids.

5 Things I Noticed About Riding the Trails with Kids

It was an educational experience. The trail had dozens of signs and helpful information about the history of the trail and different vegetation or trees that you passed. These made excellent natural breaking points.Obviously our six-year old was more interest in learning from them than our two year old was, but I also noticed that it was a good break point for us adults too. It kept our minds learning and growing, and away from focusing on any whining that may have been happening.
Be prepared to take lots of breaks. And when I say lots, I mean lots!:) If your goal is to get a workout and do a lot of riding, you might want to consider changing your mindset and save the workout for another time. Plan to ride slow and enjoy the fresh air.My husband wore his Platypus Hydration Backpack, which helped to make stops a little less in length. He could easily pull his bicycle next to my daughter (the one who was constantly thirsty!) and let her take a quick sip of the water, without even opening his bag.Taking breaks every 10-15 minutes, or constantly hearing kids saying “I can’t do it” or “Can we take another break?” or “Are we there yet?” is not easy. Prepare yourself mentally and come with extra patience. Plenty of extra patience!I found it helpful to remind myself of the joys I was having with my kids and the memories we were making. Our purpose was to have fun and enjoy God’s nature. They were going to remember the ride and the time together, NOT the complaining, tiredness and whining. And honestly, it won’t be long until that’s all you’ll remember too!
We did not pass or meet a single unhappy or rude person on that trail. I was so impressed with everyone who passed us. They were all friendly and helpful. They understood we were riding with children and they were not bothered by us being on the trail together as a family. (We were always careful to pull over to the right side, and often stopped to let people pass.) Even the quiet passers-by were smiling at us.
It was a 90 degree day the day we went, but you never would have known it. The trail is almost completely covered in shade, with tall trees on both sides of the trail. That kept it cool and as you ride you get a nice breeze flowing over you.
There is always something unique to see. It never occurred to me that you could go horseback riding on the trails, but while we were biking back to our car, we passed two ladies riding horseback! I’m sure you can’t even imagine how thrilled our children were to pass a horsey. Of course they all want to go horseback riding on the trails now!

Riding off the Trails and On Back Country Roads

As I mentioned earlier, we had planned to visit a friend of my husband’s during our visit. In order to get to their house however, we had to ride off the trail and on the roads. I’ll be honest, this made me nervous. Riding on a road with kids, just wasn’t my cup of tea.

However, I will tell you, if you have to do it too, it wasn’t that bad! The roads that we were on, were back roads and were not heavily traveled. We road about 1 mile on back roads and only 4-5 cars passed us the entire time!

Change of Plans – Stay flexible!

By the time we returned to the Root Beer Barrel we had already rode about 5-6 miles. We had a good lunch and we thought we could definitely handle continuing on the trail and riding to the Jigger Shop like originally planned, but we ended up deciding not to this time. Since we started at 9am and it was about 1pm, we figured we better not push our limit.

I think we made a good decision. We were probably about 5-10 minutes into the ride home, and we suddenly realized it was really quiet. This is what we saw! All the riding must have really tired them out!

It’s then that you find yourselves in the predicament as a parent. “Our kids are asleep, it will probably last about an hour, what do we do?”

Being the frugal-minded parents we are, we immediately tried to think, “what can we do in Lancaster County that is fun, free and good to do on a hot day?”

We considered splurging and visiting Woodcrest Retreat pool since we just learned the gigantic slide is included in the cost of your pool admission. But you’ll never guess what we ended up doing! I’ll be sharing it on the blog next week. 🙂