High Trestle Trail -- Slater to Oasis and Slater to Woodward, Iowa

This is part 2 of a 4-part weekend trip to ride a couple of trails in Central Iowa.

Part 1: Great Western Trail (West Des Moines to Cumming)
Part 2: High Trestle Trail (Slater to Oasis and then Slater to Woodward)
Part 3: High Trestle Trail Full Moon Ride (Madrid to the Trestle Bridge)
Part 4: High Trestle Trail (Ankeny to Oasis)

Anniversary Weekend

Day 2, Saturday daytime:

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.