"Makes you realize how vulnerable these great tunnels and structures truly are."

One of the tunnels on the Hiawatha Trail is closed due to rock fall. It's not as hard to build a shoe-fly for bikes around it. The rest were open though.

You can bike one-way down hill and pay for the shuttle bus back up, or you can bike back uphill as we did. There's one place where the shuttle bus road shares the railroad grade for a short time.

There's also another very worthwhile long bike trail along Lake Coeur d'Alene that is a former UP branch line. You can easily do both on the same trip, as we did.

I still think one of the most scenic rail trails is the Milwaukee branch line trail from Duvall to just above Snoqualmie Falls, right in our own Seattle backyard. I've biked to it from my place in Redmond. I'm told that part of it washed out recently, but it's scenic and has some excellent trestles. I've never been able to find any photos of it in use in any train books though.