In anticipation of our sandpit adventure, the first few hours of the day were spent feverishly working on sleds to take with us. There was an incredible diversity of designs from luge-type sleds to saucers and toboggans.
We finally settled into preparing "The Clubhouse" for the road and discussing turn-taking strategies for pulling our heavy load.
After the initial 10 feet or so, there was discussion about reducing the weight. There was a group decision to jettison the weights that been attached as an anchor to slow us going downhill.
Nearly to the Noquemanon Trail!
After a tremendous amount of effort and frustration we decided to take a doughnut break. (Many thanks to our benefactor!) There was a great deal of discussion regarding what we could do to move more easily and how we could get the wheels to work better. We also discussed whether we should just abandon the clubhouse and just ride our bikes to the sandpit and figure out another way to take our sleds with us. A suggestion was made to move the axle and we decided to do the work there on the road.
Moving the axle made an incredible amount of difference in how easy it was to pull the clubhouse, but once we got rolling again, the wooden plates on the wheel wells started to splinter.
After pulling the clubhouse as far as we could, and then breaking the wheel, we made it to a shaded portion of the trail. It was lunchtime and we were tired so we decided to set up our camp just there and take out our BBQ to cook the lunch we had planned for the sandpit. Bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches, pop-tarts, and we even tried cooking an egg in it's shell just to see what would happen.
As we pondered what to do next, we felt it was important to get the clubhouse off the trail for all the walkers and bikers that were coming through. We tried to bring a truck to carry out the clubhouse, but the truck got stuck, so we were lucky to have access to a tractor to help the truck as well as pick up the clubhouse and carry it away.
It wasn't the day we had planned, but we had an adventure. We shared belly laughs, moments of deep frustration; as well as hope and excitement when we problem-solved through several repairs. After bringing all of our things back to camp, we headed to the rope swing for a final plunge in the Dead River.
We ended the day with ice-cream and talk of what everyone was going to build next......
(The clubhouse was going home with Max and Emmy, and paint colors were already being picked out for the interior.)