Falls City, NE to Nebraska City, NE -Day 4- 55.38 mi.

Today we biked from Falls City, NE to Nebraska City. For the most part, it was a flat ride. When we first left Falls City, it was quite hilly, but flattened out after the town of Nemaha, where we ate lunch. Soon after Nemaha, we had the pleasure of riding on the Steamboat Trace, a hard-packed limestone trail, similar to the KATY Trail in Missouri. Steamboat Trace started in Brownville and went almost to Nebraska City, a distance of 22 miles. This was nice because it was flat, had no cars, and there was a lot of wildlife. We had been on the trace only 10 minutes when 2 tiny fawns and a doe trotted ahead of us on the trail. Overall it was a fine ride. The only problem we had was that near the end of the trail, ClarkWheel had a flat tire. We stopped and fixed that, and moved on. We had the choice of stopping in Peru, about midway on the trail, but learned there were no showers and so we decided to go on to Nebraska City. When we reached the end of Steamboat Trace, we had to ride for 1.5 miles on very loose gravel. We probably would have been better off walking the bikes instead on trying to ride them. Both of us almost went down while riding. On the final 6 or 8 miles, we encountered many large hills that were long and fairly steep. These were some of the most challenging hills we have had. ClarkWheel's chain slipped off climbing one of those hills and my bottom waterbottle cage broke off causing me to run over it and the waterbottle. It could have been a bad scene, but I managed to keep control of the bicycle. We had a hard time reaching the campground, but when we got there, we were happy. It had been a long, hard ride. Our question for the Seventh Graders pertains to Steamboat Trace: The Steamboat Trace trail is funded and maintained by a large, nationwide organization that uses abandoned railways to make bicycle and hiking paths. The KATY and Steamboat Trace are two trails this organization made and maintains. What is the name of the organization? (Mr. G is a member of this group.)

-SpokeWrench