Flint Hills Trail -- Rantoul to Osawatomie

In our quest to prepare for the “50 for 50” ride later this summer, today we did a 30-mile ride on the Flint Hills Trail starting at Rantoul. A lot of horses and a lot of horse crap that needed to be dodged. In general I’m not a fan of trails where bikes and horses are sharing the space, but in this socially distancing time the rural trails have a lot less people on them than the paved urban trails do. So we do what we have to do.

That darn missing bridge!

 

Prairie Spirit Trail - Princeton to Scipio, KS

Memorial Day Weekend - Covid edition 

Because we plan to do a 50-mile ride to commemorate a 50th birthday coming later this summer, we need to start preparing our bodies for that, so we drove over to the Prairie Spirit Trail to get in a lengthy ride on a crushed limestone trail.

We parked at the Princeton trailhead.

Happy to see our state post this warning. Sage advice.

To do our part, we had our bandana headbands around our necks so we could pull up our masks when we encountered other trail users.

We headed south from Princeton. Between Princeton and Richmond we encountered a lot of beautiful wildflowers alongside the trail.

And a little box turtle in the middle of the trail. We helped him on along in the direction he was headed.

When we arrived in Richmond, we veered a half-block off the trail to check out the downtown. This was an old abandoned corner bank building.

We headed on south out of Richmond. Just past the underpass of Hwy 59, we encountered this caution barricade.  Fair warning: There were spots from this point on into Scipio that will shake your nerves and rattle your brain.

We turned around at Scipio and returned back the way we came. 

A Boy Scout's Eagle project. Had to take a picture of the adorable bobcat on the sign! 

Pretty trail view. 

When we got back to our car at the Princeton trailhead, we weren't quite to 20 miles, so headed north from there.

Old signal base from the railroad. 

In the last 2-3 miles, he started to get a little hangry so we stopped for a short energy bar break! 

Back to our car.  27 mile ride on a gorgeous 80-degree, low-wind day!