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| We never found a box to pay said fee.... |
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| Sometimes we need a little direction! |
Trail goes off to the left once you cross this bridge.. Not real obvious.. I seem to recall a bit of marital strife over that! :)
Wife does not recall this at all. So it must not have been too big a fight. LOL ~~ H
Finally we are off into the tree tunnel!
It was a bit of a climb up out of town to our destination! (Back when we struggled to ride 5 miles :) )
We decided to do the southern route toward Coin in the morning because we were playing the Bicycle Ride and Seek game we had discovered on Facebook and needed to find a tunnel, and Google maps had indicated that there was one just a little south of town where Highway 2 crossed the trail. And do you know, Google maps was right? We found our tunnel! Picture of bike with it was what was required for the challenge.
I clearly followed none of fellow Kansas bicycle blogger Randy's excellent and expert tips about How To Photograph A Bike.
But on the flip side, I can't get over how ugly that bike was before I had it painted pink. It's hardly picture-worthy. Oy. ~~H
Cool old barn along the trail as we headed back to Shenandoah!
Look! No sharks allowed... LOL
(Yes, he is making fun of me. :) You can read our Raccoon River Trail blog post here to see what the shark reference means! ~~H )
When we got back to Shenandoah, it was lunch time so we headed back into town.
Shenandoah is a really neat small town with a great downtown. In fact, our very nice and clean hotel, the Shenandoah Inn and Suites was located in the downtown business district. The homemade banana bread offered with the free breakfast was delicious. I would recommend this hotel to anyone riding the Wabash Trace and needing lodging for the night. It was a surprising find of the most pleasant kind in a town with a population of just 5000.
(Picture snagged off the Interwebs since I neglected to snap one of my own, but I wanted to give them a shout-out here on our blog since we were so pleased with our accommodations. ~~H)
Zooming in closer you can see one of multiple benches and bike racks scattered through the inviting downtown area.
Zooming in even closer, you can see the tiles of children's art drawings embedded into the pedestals. And again, these were scattered all through the downtown area. How cool is that, seriously?Art is so important to quality of life, and how neat for those kids to know that their art is permanently on display in such a public manner.
And more art, in the form of a large mural depicting the trail on the side of a downtown building.
Had no idea Shenandoah was the birthplace of the Everly Brothers!
(This is also perhaps the smallest house I have ever seen in my life. ~~H)
For lunch we decided to try the restaurant in the old Depot!
Our nutritious meal after we had already sampled it heavily!
Neat memorabilia!
Possibly a lamp from one of the train cars?
They will let anyone into this place. See the dork at the table!
There's a beautiful ghost trapped in their mirror!
3
Lots of eye candy everywhere you look in here!
And more homage to their trail.
One of the great classics. It'll make you cry, yes it will. ~~H
Guessing Shenandoah's high school mascot is the Mustangs, based on the artful bike rack at this trailhead.
We looked over the map and decided we would try to ride to Imogene! It was only 9 miles. At that time, that was a LOOOOOOOOOONG ride for us! We talked to a couple who had just returned from riding that way. He told us it was uphill, but only a 2% grade.. not bad at all... I noted that he had a Pikes Peak biking shirt on.
We both duly took note of Mr. Pikes Peak's attire. In other words, "grade" and "not bad at all" are relative terms. LOL ~~H
The section of trail from the depot trailhead to the river is paved asphalt, but the rest is all crushed limestone.
A common sight on this ride: Cornfields.
The bridge over the East Nishtabotna River.
My man on the bridge over the East Nishtabotna River. :) ~~H
More beautiful tree tunnel!
Sharks aren't allowed on this trail, and neither are horses. ~~H
Trailside pond, heavy on the algae.
Bridge over a country road.
You see some real weirdos while out riding! :D
We made it!
(OK, technically we made it to this sign that said Imogene. I think the actual town was another mile or so up the trail and, folks, we had no burning desire to see what the actual town of Imogene offered because, frankly, we were dying at this point -- because we were young riders then and not nearly as whipped into shape as we are at the time we are writing this blog post 2 years later. My apologies to Imogene and its citizens. I'm sure your town is amazing. Maybe someday we'll come back and ride that extra mile into the city proper. LOL ~~ H)
But we made it back to our vehicle and lived to write this blog post.
On the drive back home we rewarded ourselves by stopping at the most hilarious combination restaurant/ice cream place/farm supply store in Nebraska City:
Taco John's/Dairy Queen/Orscheln.
He's gotta have his Potatoes Ole!
She's gotta have her Dairy Queen Blizzard!
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