Day 34: Bourbon Lancey to paray le monial, spotlight on Hazel

Distance: 28 miles

Easy riding day along the canal. We lost James for 2 hours, but someone from the search party found him about 6 miles ahead. Turns out he was in the back and stopped for a bio break, and the group turned off the path into a town and no one noticed that he wasn’t with the group. It’s a good reminder to always know who’s behind you.

We stopped by a church with scarves everywhere as artwork, here’s Bennett and Brittany.

This campsite is great, it has picnic tables in each site and great grass. I’ll definitely stay here on future trips.

As I was writing this at 12:12am, the camp host stopped by as he finished fixing a late night leak in the toilets near us. He was asking me about our trip and how things are going. He asked where we were staying tomorrow, it turns out the campsite we were considering is a “naturist” site, in his words, “no clothes”. That would have been a fun one to pull up to being outnumbered by teens and small children. Thanks for the heads up! Turns out we may do our first 50 mile day.

I want to profile each of my kids, and talk about how each one does on a trip like this. Hazel can be the first. She turns two in August, is the youngest of four, and has loads of personality. She’s also very chill, and cries less in the trailer than any kid yet. She can be reasoned with, and if we explain what we’re doing and ask her to do something like stay out for a few minutes while we work on something, she does great. She’s very smart.

She stays entertained with all the other small kids that are here on the trip, she has several different girls that love taking care of her. She’s getting loads of attention which we’re really grateful for.

She sleeps quite a bit in the trailer, but she really prefers to ride with the top down, or the rain fly up. She liked the wind in her face. We always make sure to give her time to run around whenever we stop.

She usually rides alone, but here she’s riding with her friend Harper who was with us for the first few weeks.