I didn't take any still photos of the limestone portion of the trail because I needed to keep both hands firmly on the handlebars at all times due to the occasional ruts and areas of thick gravel that had my bike skidding more than once. He didn't have any trouble with his Cannondale with the fatter mountain bike tires, but my skinnier hybrid tires required me to stay very diligent and alert the entire ride.
There was about 1 to 1.5 miles of smooth concrete surface, which was very nice.
This portion of the trail gets filed under "we did it once, doubt we will ever do it again."
- It seemed longer than 2.5 miles.
- It had some good sized hills.
- There were a lot of grass clippings with a ton of shredded trash and what appeared to be sharp pieces of chewed up tin cans deposited on the trail from the lawnmower.
- The "trail" transitioned to a narrow sidewalk for the last mile. In fact, there was signage indicating pedestrians were to use the sidewalk and bicycles were to share the road with the vehicles. However, we ignored that suggestion, as we just don't like being out there on the road with too many distracted drivers, especially what appeared to be a pretty high-speed 4-lane thoroughfare.
We finally made our way to the Harry S Truman Farm, which surprisingly had less signage indiating its existance than I would have imagined for a National Historic Site. There was one not very large road sign that I completely missed seeing as we rode past it. The house is set back a bit off Blue Ridge Boulevard and mostly hidden by trees, so it's actually pretty easy to miss.
It was a neat historical site to visit, but I would probably just drive to it.
We made our way back to our car to finish our 19.5 mile ride. There was a bike share rental station at the Shelter 14 trailhead parking lot where we parked.
Because we are self-quarantining from sit-down restaurants (and that makes us sad), we are limited to drive-thru restaurants. However, we grow weary of the run-of-the-mill chain restaurants, so we try to search out other choices. We found Unforked that offered a drive-thru. She had the fish tacos. He had a hamburger and a very yummy, buttery, spicy grilled Mexican corn on the cob. He did warn it is heartburn-inducing spicy.
In an attempt to cool the heartburn, we chased our meal with some frozen custard from Andy's Frozen Custard. He had the turtle sundae. She had the Jitterbug. She would not choose that particular flavor again; the espresso flavor was overwhelming to the point of tasting bitter.
Headed west toward home, we witnessed the third or fourth day of smoky/hazy sunsets from the massive West Coast forest fires.
Video of our ride!
