Bike riding is fun in and of itself, but in an effort to make it even more
fun, we have decided to play along with a Facebook page entitled "Bicycle Ride and Seek."It's a fun monthly
scavenger hunt of 12 items to look for while riding your bike.When
you find one of the items on the list,
you take a picture of the item with your bike included in the photo and
post it to the Facebook page, along with how many miles you rode. There
is nothing to win.The purpose is
simply to have fun and encourage you to get out on your bike more often.It's fun to feel like a kid again doing a
scavenger hunt.It's also camaraderie
among the other participants and it's interesting seeing the creativity in the
photos that are posted and how people interpret the list of items to search
for.Most importantly, it's just one more way for
my sweetie and I to spend time together and enjoy ourselves!
Here is August's list:
Here are our finds:
A clock showing 7:30 -- 5 Miles
School Bus -- 5 Miles
Tire swing (industrial size) -- 5 miles
Statue of a woman -- 5 miles
Blue plastic kiddie pool -- 5 miles
A cat riding a bike? That's not right! (But it's cool) -- 5 miles.
Picture from inside a Porta-Potty -- 26.3 Mile ride
All the way from the Cumming Tap Bar in Cumming, Iowa!
Chickens! On the High Trestle Trail about 5 miles north of Ankeny, Iowa -- 14 mile ride.
Item purchased at a Garage Sale - with bike and garage sale in picture -- 14 miles
Working Phone booth in Lamoni, Iowa -- 8 mile ride
We didn't get them all this month. We weren't able to come up with a song title or an ice cream cone/snowcone. We'll try harder next month! :)
For our third and final day of riding in Des Moines, we started out the day with another filling and most delicious breakfast from our hosts at the Two Bears Lodge in Madrid, Iowa.
This smoothie was outstanding, not to mention artfully presented.
Then there was the main course. Owner Tami will not let you leave hungry. We were so stuffed!
We then loaded up our bags and bicycles and headed over to Ankeny.
Along the drive, we got a different perspective of the High Trestle Bridge viewed from the highway.
We rode the High Trestle Trail from Ankeny (the global headquarters of Casey's General Stores) to The Oasis and back.
Many houses on the outskirts of Ankeny decorate their backyards abutting the trail, spreading a little joy to those enjoying the trail.
A couple of neighboring houses even built themselves bridges over a drainage ditch to allow trail access from their backyards.
Once outside of Ankeny the trail meanders through farmland, sometimes straight as an arrow
sometimes gently curving
The arch the trees make over the trail here is really cool!
The trail had cracks patched in several places.
There were many remnants of railroad signage from when it was an active track.
And then there was this random quirkiness. Because who doesn't love a vintage Pepsi machine? :)
Our turnaround spot was at a rest area dubbed "The Oasis", which provides a neat bike rack fashioned out of railroad track rails, a covered gazebo with a picnic table and a pit toilet. It's great if you want everyone sitting at the tables to hear you pee!!! LOL
On the drive home, we kind of cheated to mark off an item on our Bicycle Ride & Seek challenge. You're technically supposed to find these items while riding your bike but we found this phone booth in Lamoni, Iowa, so grabbed the front wheel off one of one bikes to snag this picture of "phone booth with bike." Shhhhhhh, don't tell Randy LOL
And right next to the phone booth was this cool metal flower made from a bike wheel!
VIDEO of our ride. Hope it doesn't make you seasick. There's a lot of swaying back and forth. Action cam video is a constant state of experimentation. We learned that helmet mount isn't for us as the body motion of riding is just too much.
In discussing our riding plans for today, we knew we would be doing the Full Moon Ride this evening, riding the 3 miles out from Madrid to see the
crown jewel of this trail, the magnificent High Trestle bridge, lit up, but for our daytime ride we decided to start at the midpoint of the
trail in Slater and planned to ride the southern leg of the trail to the south terminus
in Ankeny.
So, after an amazing and very filling breakfast
prepared by the owners of the bed and breakfast we stayed at in Madrid, the Two Bears Lodge,
we drove the 7 miles over to Slater on Highway 210. Though there was a parking area right off the highway, it didn't appear to have any restroom facilities, so we parked in the Earl Grimm Park under the Slater water
tower where there was a Port-A-Potty. We did discover that there was a restroom in the park that we had to ride right past to get onto the trail.
Surprisingly, Slater did not have any type of trailhead sign, or much of any type of signage related to the trail, so here is our
standard pre-ride sign picture in front of the mileage sign along the
trail.
We headed off and immediately encountered a trail full of
people, which is awesome. That's what trails are for and it does my
heart good to see so many people enjoying these wonderful community
assets.
Just one mile south we rolled into the next town, Sheldahl.
Nostalgic trailside yard art (sounds nicer than junk, doesn't it?)
And there's our mileage goals of the two
remaining stops on this end of the trail.
I think at this point, at least, we
still planned to shoot for Ankeny. As we left Sheldahl it started
out promisingly enough. A little curve, some trees.....
.... and we couldn't have asked.for more
beautiful weather, especially for early/mid August. Temps in the mid 70s
and cloud cover.
Which was extremely fortunate, because this stretch of
trail is wide open. No tree cover whatsoever. And it simply parallels
the highway, arrow straight. It's not flat, but it is arrow straight.
There's the trail and there's the highway.
Oh look.....
still the highway.
We decided if this was all it was going be, we
would turn around at Oasis and head back to Slater and see what the
trail going west from Slater looked like.
Oasis turned out to be not a
town but a gazebo with a picnic table, and basically a permanent Port-A-Potty. Hello random bicyclist we don't know.
It
also had a super cool bike rack made out of a piece of old railroad
rail. I love when "stuff" is repurposed in artistic and creative ways.
So, back the way we came, paralleling the highway.
This
section seemed to be heavily used by a more hard-core variety of cyclists on speed bikes with razor thin tires. And there we were -- lumbering
along on our knobby-tire, folding Montague mountain bikes. I did comment to handsome guy
that if they lived where we do and had the trail surface that we have to
ride on, their skinny-ass tiny tires wouldn't last a day. Hmmmmph. That's right.
We made it
back to Slater and needed a break and needed to refuel the bodies, so we packed up the
bikes and headed toward Ames to see what we could find for lunch.
However.......this girl can't resist a garage sale, and since one of the Bicycle Ride and Seek Challenge items this month was a picture of your bike with something you bought at a garage sale in front of the garage sale, when we saw a garage sale sign on the way to lunch we took the opportunity to stop. Cool, I found a resistance band with workout DVD for $1! ;) We kind of cheated since we technically didn't "ride" our bikes to the garage sale, but since we ended up riding 37+ miles this day anyway, a little fudging won't matter just once, right? (Sorry, Randy........ We bad.)
Finally made it to Ames and found a Wendy's. While we ate, we discussed what our afternoon should consist of. Sweetie said we needed to go see
the bridge in the daytime, too, so we decided to go back to Slater and ride
west to the bridge.
Headed west out of Slater you
ride past the Slater elevator.....
...... and out into open cropland, but
at least it didn't parallel right along the highway.
This section has a
mowed 10 foot grass strip for equestrian riders to
use alongside the cement surface trail. We didn't see a single person riding a horse. I have to wonder how
many really do. I would think there are way too many bikes on the trail
for anyone to want to throw a horse into that mix, especially since more than one group of cyclists rode past us with booming, and I do mean booming extremely loud metal music blasting. One guy even had what amounted to a boom box strapped to the back of his bike. It was nuts.
Note: There is
this grassy path accommodation for horses from Slater to Woodward, but
horses are not allowed on "The Bridge."
There's my sweetie, rocking the
Contour Roam camera on his helmet, getting our rides on video.
And
there's me, rocking my homemade denim helmet cover.
We finally rolled into Madrid. This is a town with a population of just 3000 people, but look at this signage. They love the trail and the money it brings to their town, and it shows!
Requisite trailhead photo. Hard to believe this trail has only been open 3 years, and the sheer number of people we shared the trail with this beautiful August Saturday. We estimated it was probably 400-500+ people that we encountered and 95% of them were on bikes. "If you build it, they will come" obviously applies not only to baseball fields in Iowa, but also trails.
Headed on west as you leave Madrid and head toward the namesake High Trestle Bridge, you encounter first this neat tunnel
Shortly followed by this one
Which has in store some really neat treats for you as you enter into it.
The pride they take in their trail and what it means to their town is evident:
And hometown pride, too
The older I get, the more I am appreciating art, especially when I ride.
And then you ride under yet a third underpass:
And before you know it (just 3 miles from town) you have arrived at the crown jewel of this trail, the High Trestle Bridge over the Des Moines River.
This is the base of the original 1912 bridge
At that point, we looked at each other and said "Now what"? Woodward and the end of the trail was 2.5 miles further west from the bridge, which would add another 5 miles onto the ride. In hindsight that maybe was a decision we would come to regret a few hours later, but we also wanted to say we rode the entire trail. So..... on to Woodward we rode.
Some of the scenery at the Woodward trailhead.
Looks like a frat party prank
A welcome amenity was the clean bathrooms and water fountain that were available.
And because my Mustang-loving man has an uncanny radar-sense when a Four-Eyed 'Stang is anywhere in his vicinity, we had to get a picture of this sitting all by its lonesome next to the co-op building.
When we got back to the bridge, we went up on the lookout that was on the original 1912 bridge and this was the view from there. Awesome!!!
And then we began the long, long, looooooooooooong ride back to our car.
We stopped at one point to take a picture of what we joked was the "Barn: Half Off!" sale.
We stopped at another point after that somewhere just to get off our bikes and sit on a bench for a little bit, because seriously we were dying. Both of us. At that point, our sole existence had literally become the name of our blog: Just. Keep. Pedaling. Because it wasn't fun anymore, but we had no other choice. We had to get back to our car. And we finally did. And we drove back to our B&B and gratefully collapsed onto the waiting beautiful bed. LOL
The rest of the house was beautiful as well:
With a really cool welcome rug
and an amazing view of the bridge from the living room.
I highly recommend the Two Bears Lodge to anyone planning to spend a weekend in Madrid. The owners, Tami and Wyman, are friendly and accommodating, the breakfasts superb and very filling, the rooms clean, and the price extremely reasonable.
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