Coeur d'Alene, ID

You’ll want to bring two additions to the common bike-riding amenities when you ride Black Rock Trail, just north of Coeur d’Alene, ID, off State Highway 3: your camera, and, if you wear them, glasses. The first is due to the spectacular autumn scenery in every color of the spectrum. The second is so that you can avoid squishing the many Woolly Bear caterpillars cruising the trail as well, seeking out their “overwintering” sites. Folklore has it that the size of the brown stripe on Woolly Bears’ backs is a forecaster of what kind of winter it’s going to be. Well, according to what I saw (and I weaved in and out of about a gazillion of these cute, little furry guys, all with assorted stripe patterns, some without any) this upcoming winter could be anybody’s guess.

So with no new insight into whether to break out my snow skis just yet, I was happy to share the trail with them all the same, as the outing was just the antidote for a family anticipating Fall’s end approaching too soon.

Just short of an hour’s drive from the Spokane Valley, Black Rock Trailhead is approximately 5 miles southwest of I-90, off Highway 3. Part of the “Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes”—a stretch of 73 miles of newly-laid, 10-feet-wide asphalt—it is perfect for the family bike ride, as well as road bikers and in-line skaters. The gentle grade of the trail and smooth surface made it easy on our six- and three-year-old, who are both still sporting training wheels, and the clean and well-maintained bathrooms every four miles were a godsend. There are picnic tables every one to two miles, and at every trailhead, there is parking, a location map, picnic tables, and a bench. It is not recommended that you drink any of the surface water, even if filtered, and even though some trailheads have safe drinking water, bring plenty of your own to play it safe.

The trail, which starts in Plummer, follows much of the original rail line which served the mining industry in the area, starting in 1884. It follows the Coeur d’Alene Lake shoreline for most of the way, before passing through a chain of lakes—Cave Lake, Kilarney Lake, and Rose Lake, just to name a few—and marshlands, then winds along scenic Coeur d’Alene River and on up into the mountains to Mullan.

Now, as part of the environmental cleanup partnered by the Union Pacific Railroad, the U.S. Government, the State of Idaho and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, the trail’s thick asphalt and gravel barriers isolate contaminants from the toxic waste accumulated during mining, and allow the area to be used once again—which is something I am very thankful for. As it seems the caterpillars are too.