We
rode 43 miles today in 3 separate rides (11 miles, then 26 miles, then 6 miles in the dark for the Full Moon Ride).
This night ride is an event you should make sure to experience. If you are bucket-listing the High Trestle Trail, go one step further and make sure you are there for one of the Full Moon rides. You won't regret it!
Before the Full Moon ride, we ate supper at a BBQ restaurant in Madrid
It had a cool bike rack outside that mimicked the High Trestle Bridge.
Neat bike decor in the restaurant. The town really embraces the trail & the traffic it brings to their businesses.
Happy anniversary to us! And what a wonderful anniversary weekend it
was! We drove up to central Iowa
to ride a couple of the many great
trails in that area. Our Friday ride was the Great Western Trail
We parked at the northern trailhead at the edge of Water Works Park in West Des Moines. The trailhead is located along Valley Drive/George Flagg Parkway, near Park Avenue (across from the Izaak Walton League Clubhouse on Valley Drive). The stoplight where we turned to
get to the trailhead was also actually where the trail crossed that
street and we were greeted with this huge orange trail closed sign.
A momentary flash of disappointment until we read further and saw the
dates were for next week. Good deal!
So the plan was to ride to Cumming
and back. It was a great paved trail, but there seems to be very few bike
trails that are not paved in Iowa. Jealousy inducing for sure.
I
got to ride beside this good-looking dude.
Lots of twists and
curves in this great trail. Keeps the ride interesting and fun.
A
little mini stop sign.
Lots of neat relics from the trail's former
life. The concrete base of a signal.
Construction being
done on trail, likely related to the week-long closure scheduled for later this
month.
The road currently to nowhere.
Ah..... Trail got a
new box culvert.
I would say 90% of this trail is forested/tree
covered.
Here's a shot of one of the few open areas
Trees
formed a neat archway effect (which we stood in front of and therefore blocked, but take our word for it. It was arched. Really.)
Probably my favorite relic of the
entire weekend. A marker that we assume is giving the mileage
from that point to Kansas City.
Waiting for a train? Buddy, you
might be there for a while! :) (I could wait all day looking at you! :) ~~S)
Then we rolled into Cumming, greeted
by the playground ......
....... a plethora of party buses
available for rent. I was partial to the pink one. This also was an item
on our August Bicycle Ride and Seek. School bus triple score!
Didn't say they still had to be in service as a school bus. :)
.............. and their long, tubular water
tower proudly proclaiming Cumming. I'm pretty sure no one has ever made a
joke about that before. Especially not your dork husband! :) ~~S
We crossed off another Ride and Seek list item with a picture of a Porta-A-Potty from
inside (right???) We found this Port-A-Potty at the Cumming Tap, a
popular bar and destination for riders of this trail, and while we did not partake
of their services on this ride, we did take advantage of the photo op.
Yes, here I am, holding the Port-A-Potty door open so my darling could
get a picture of the bike and the Port-A-Potty from inside. I have no doubt people think we are nuts. :) For those wondering, that is the lip of the urinal on the wall :) ~~S
We also saw a lot of wildlife on this trail, of course your standard
rabbits and squirrels. We also saw 2 deer on the trail many yards in
front of us, but they bolted before we got too close. But then, a little further up the trail, we saw this sweet little guy munching on grass and leaves.
We never saw Mama, but I'm sure she was not far away. Baby still
had his spots.
And then there were the chipmunks! Oh, the
chipmunks. LOL When you see this sign, understand that the wise person who put it there was not just
whistling Dixie.
Chipmunk anecdote: Sweetie and I are riding along side by side, I'm on the left, he's on the right. Now, understand, this was before I had been
alerted to the possibility of chipmunk attack. I hear a rustling in
the grass to my left and I look down only to a fist-size blur of brown shoot itself right under my moving bike, and while my brain is
trying to process "what the h*@# IS that?!?! Is that a chipmunk?", he
reverses direction and shoots back out from under my -- yes, still moving --
bike and back into the grass at the side of the trail. He was a fast
little bugger. Seriously, all I saw was brown blur/brown blur in the space of
less than 1.3 seconds.
By this time, my brain had finally caught up and
my mouth said what it was thinking.
Yes, it said "What the h*@# WAS that?!?! Was that a chipmunk?"
And husband is beside me laughing
hysterically, and said "Yes, that was a chipmunk and he actually looked
like he was contemplating climbing your leg to safety before deciding
that back into the grass would be a better option."
I inquired if I hit him. Didn't think I had, didn't feel a thump.
He said, "No you didn't hit him, but I wish I'd had the
video camera running." It was a hilarious site to see! It would have been an AFV worthy video if I had captured it! ~~S
This was not my suicidal chipmunk, but one I
came upon later in the ride who sat there so obligingly while I took his
picture, before darting at similar warp speed down that hole in the
concrete you see right beside him.
Here's another great old
railroad relic still living its life on the trail. Assume this was
alerting the engineer to blow his whistle for an upcoming road crossing.
Is this not an awesome picture? Can't you still hear that
whistle blowing?
All the trails we rode this weekend had emergency
call locators about every mile. Call 911, give them this number and they
will be able to find where you are. Thankfully, we never had to test that out.
This trail actually goes right
through a golf course.
I guess just another reason to wear your
helmet. FORE!
But then we were once again off the golf course and
back into the trees.
And before we knew it we were back to our car,
but were still up for more riding, so we decided to follow the arrow in
the direction of the Bill Riley Trail.
We had no idea what the
Bill Riley trail was so we decided to go find out.
The 0.9 miles to
the trail takes you onto a low-traffic park road where we met 4 or 5
vehicles. No biggie. The road curved around the Raccoon River.
We
had almost given up that the Bill Riley trail actually existed, but decided to "go
see what might be around that curve up there." And good thing we did,
because we came upon this crossroads of trails. Seriously, central Iowa
is absolutely bike trail heaven.
And this super cool bridge
over the Raccoon River. Could this really have been a bridge built for
cars? Sweetie insists it was.... think model A era.
We
were glad we persevered in finding the Bill Riley trail, because that
bridge itself was worth finding. We went on and rode several more miles
of this trail, (including going on-street for a mile or more looking for another Ride and Seek list item, but we were unsuccessful in that particular search). I would classify the Bill Riley Trail as a park/neighborhood
trail.
In all, we finished the evening having ridden 26 miles. Back at the parking lot we talked to a nice couple who were fascinated with our folding bikes. They stated they were headed up the Great Western Trail to go to the Cumming Tap. I said "Won't it be dark by the time you're headed back?" They laughed and said "Yes." I'm not sure I would like the combination of that trail, darkness and chipmunks, but I admired their courage and fortitude. :)
So, we changed into some dry clothes, tried to cover the sweat smell as best we could with foo-foo spray and headed for supper. Since it was our anniversary, we splurged at Bravo Cuchina Italiana.
Thought it was sweet that we were seated at our table at 8 pm on the dot, the time of our wedding ceremony.
