ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Normally, seeing a paved path wouldn’t feel that exciting. But after you’ve been pedaling miles through a sandy trail in the desert under the scorching sun, nothing looks more welcoming.

“It felt so nice to be back on pavement,” says First Class Scout Jerry Yao, 14. “Sometimes the sand was really thick and very hard to ride through. And sometimes there were huge rocks everywhere — along with sand — and that was very hard to get around.”

Troop 305 of Walla Walla, Washington, tackled more than 300 miles of pavement, gravel and sand this past summer during a 10-day bicycling trip across Washington and Idaho. Some