Turkey Creek Trail Merriam, KS

For our second KC ride today, we checked out the Turkey Creek Trail in Merriam. 

We parked in Waterfall Park. 

The waterfall of Waterfall Park.

But, man, do they take all the fun out of it.

This is a trail that seems to have an identity crisis. 

Pretty much all signage that we found seemed to 

just call it some variation of "streamway."

This was the one and only sign we found that ever 

referenced it as "Turkey Creek Trail."

It really was the weirdest thing.

It was a pretty trail and Turkey Creek had attractive stonework banks. 

The Ikea Superstore looms large like a bright blue Scandinavian minimalist castle just beyond the ever-present roar of I-35.

If you need another example.......

But as a study in contrasts, there are the historical markers. 

I found this uniquely-shaped piece of playground equipment currently under construction to be interesting. 

One should always be very suspicious of bright orange signs hanging on light poles with vague identifications such as "Area 2". I wonder if we missed the mothership.

Also very interesting was the garage sale sign on the bike trail, which did in actuality point to a garage sale that was open. Shrewd marketing? 

We also scored one more item for our Bicycle Ride and Seek scavenger hunt.
A "fraction" at a Sonic alongside the trail.  1/2 price happy hour! 

And that wrapped up our ride on the Turkey Creek Trail, an 8 mile ride. 

For supper, we headed to Don Chilitos.

Who doesn't love a serve yourself all-you-can-eat chips and salsa and sopapilla buffet? Nom. 

We both had the enchilada platters. It was as much food as it looked like.  

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Tomahawk Creek Trail Overland Park, KS

Today we finished up the portion of the Tomahawk Trail in KC that we had not ridden yet.  

During our almost 13 mile ride we were able to find several scavenger hunt
items from the August 2015 Bicycle Ride and Seek Facebook page.

A "car part not on a car". It even appeared to be bolted to the ground outside the fence of this golf course.  We wondered if it served as a bumper of some sort for mowing purposes.

A "hole".  Kind of. Definitely a hazard. 

A sizeable tree had actually fallen into the creek and the roots took that much of the trail with it.

A "No dumping sign" 

and a "park bench"

We also found some cool things that were not on the list.

Several gnome homes, I guess they are called.
This was just one of about 5 or 6 we saw. 

It really seems to be a "thing" on this particular trail, as we encountered several 

on the other portion of this trail when we rode it last summer. 

And this very interesting tree.  Looks like something out of Winnie the Pooh. 

We also encountered some pretty steep hills that we really hadn't anticipated. The trail had to diverge from the creek due to yet another golf course (suburban KC -- lots of golf courses), so the trail was basically routed up the steep creek banks. We didn't much enjoy that part of this trail.  

We are not training for the Olympics or even a triathlon, we are just riding 

for recreation and health and fun, so challenges like that
are frankly unnecessary. 

There are several shots in the video of us pushing our bikes.
Let's save the knees. 

The trail ended about a half block east of the intersection of Plumm and 143rd,

although there are no parking facilities at this location.

There was this somewhat incongruous scene at this rather
busy surburban intersection, however.
Too bad a silo wasn't on the scavenger hunt list this month.  

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