The Katy Trail - McKittrick, MO

The Katy Trail is a 250 mile rail trail of packed crushed limestone that follows the Missouri River from about St. Louis, to Kansas City. With our swing through Colorado, we were far enough south to spend a day riding on it. We were only able to complete 30 miles on a hot sultry day around the eastern town of McKittrick. That is OK as our main purpose was to get information for a longer trip here.

We stayed at a great B&B called Joey's Birdhouse just off the trail.  A little offbeat but very nice, very quiet. Our host (Joey herself) was a wealth of knowledge and went out of her way to make her guest comfortable. She had a great tip for dinner, and more about that in the next post. Other folks staying here shared some great tips on doing the whole trail, shuttles and places to stay.

 

 

We really liked the trail. It goes from river townto river town, mostly through quiet farmland and small towns. Trail markers were clear and up to date. Trail was well maintained and well paced with rest stops. The web site is great, and the trail map we found was even better. Joey says that while the trail is on the north side of the river, plans are to have an alternate route on the south side so you could doo a 500 mile loop.

Here are some pictures. I call your attention to the red public bike work stand complete with a a tire pump and chained on tools. I don't have much more in my home set of tools and here they had it on the side of the trail.

 

 
 

Biking in the Grand Tetons

One of the nice changes we noticed in Grand Teton National Parks since our last visit was the development of bike paths in the park, and the development of dedicated bike lanes in downtown Jackson Hole.  There is a wonderful 43 mile loop you can do up one side of the Snake River, and down the other side. If you are hanging out at Jenny Lake Campground (as we did ) then about 1/4 of it is a multi-use bike trail, from Jenny Lake back down toward Jackson Hole. It was nice to see that work was being done to expand the bike trail further north and to expand it on the east side of the river. I wrote in an earlier post that when you ride north from Jackson to Jenny Lake you feel like you can reach out and touch the mountains. You get to do that stretch on a bike if you'd like as the bike path runs along the most scenic part of the park. It was wonderful. You can also ride all the way back to town if you you are looking for some city action (like catching a Mets game at a sports bar). There will be a post about things I would change in the US National Parks, and better access for bike traffic is high on the list, but the Grand Tetons seem to have figured it out a bit and are expanding what they already have. In the pictures below the little brown dots are antelope.

Trail of the Couer d'Alenes

Got out to the Trail of the Cour d'Alenes. A very nice paved bikeway that runs for 72 miles. We went out for an hour in the time we had before checking out of the motel. Fire smoke still hangs in the air here making the sun look a pale mustard color. Along the way we think we figured out how the Hiawatha Trail connects. Here are some pictures. We don't know what the blue mini grapes trees are. The orange I am pretty sure I have seen in New England mostly as an ornamental.

 

 

Best Rail Trail Ev-er!

Today we "Road the Hiawatha" a stunning rail trail like no other. The Hiawatha is a 15 mile stretch along the Idaho-Montana border close to I-90. The trail follows the railbed of the last transcontinental railroad to be built in the US around 1910. It ran from Milwaukee to Tacoma and was shut down in 1977.

Most folks do the trail from the east to west starting at the east side Taft Tunnel parking area. You do need a trail pass ($10). Also, most folks opt for the shuttle back ($9). The shuttle does not take you all the way back to your car, but drops you on the west side of the Taft Tunnel and you pedal back through the tunnel to your car. And to anticipate a question from some TCC riders, who just last week proved what a bunch of cheap pikers you are by coming in second to Colchester Dental in the Steeplechase, yes you can avoid the $9 shuttle fee do the whole thing without the shuttle. However while not steep, it is a long 15 mile uphill grind, to flip and coast back down much of the ride back.

The start is the Taft Tunnel a 1.2 mile long hole through the mountain. Rules for the trail are you need a helmet and you need to have a light on the bike.  They give you a safety talk that tells you that most of the tunnels have water drains on the sides so you need to be more in the center than on the sides if you can. The tunnel is also about 45 degrees and over a mile in the morning, that is really cold so they advise a jacket or fleece. They also remind you take off your sunglasses, and allow your eyes to adjust to the dark for a minute or two before you take off.

 

It was a ride like nothing we have ever experienced. Even before you reach the tunnel, the cold air flows out and you plunge in. It is so dark, you quickly lose perspective outside your small circle of light. You can't tell up from down and left from right. I was very grateful for the experience my handful of trips on the TCC  Wednesday night rail trail rides gave me. You have to put you faith in your balance, bike handling skills, and that you will be able to roll along. You can hear the water running in the drains on the sides but other than that, you are in a small ball of light in expanse of black. It is not exactly scary, you are not freaked out, you are just in another world of being for about 15 minutes.

You exit the tunnel, and you are out in a very nice but steep valley of Idaho pines. Our views were obscured by fire smoke. There are many fires in the area, the largest being in north central Washington with one being about 30 miles away.

The trail is going downhill here, slabbing the side of the valley wall. You are riding with little effort beyond coasting, taking in the views.  More tunnels arrive. None as long as the first, but long enough to require you to turn on your light and take off your sunglasses. Along the way there are interpretive signs about the history of the railway and the associated mining that took place along this section of the rail line. There is an abandoned townsite were a short walk takes you up along a creek were the foundations of a mining camp (with the location of the saloon and bawdy house).

Between tunnels you start to cross high arching trestles left from the railroad days. They offer longer open views down the valley. When you look down you can see other trestles way down below you that you will be crossing. The trail hairpins at the Loop Tunnel and you proceed down the other side.

 

 

The trail gradually flattens out. For a few miles you are rolling over the old railbed, cruising through the trees. The budda-budda-budda of the rough surface does get up into your forearms a bit, but wemwere on 700/28 tires on the touring bikes. A little fatter tires would have been better.

Soon you are at the trailhead that serves as the shuttle stop. You put your bike into the back of a school bus modified with hooks to hang bikes and you are driven back up the valley to the west end of the tunnel. So, your last mile is back through the tunnel to your car. Second time through was a little less freaky, but had a good deal of traffic coming at us as we were out early in the day.

 


The actual trail does continue both east and west beyond the section we did. On the west it connects with the Trail of the Couer d'Alenes a 72 mile paved bikeway that runs through pretty country in the Idaho panhandle. We will get out and do a bit of it before checkout time in the motel his AM.

Our bottom line is that if you are ever along I-90 at the ID/MT border this is worth a stop. Even if you do not have a bike with you there are easy rentals where most people grab trail tickets and shuttle passes at Lookout Mountain Ski area , right off the highway at exit 0. It is family friendly, kids can do the rides as it is mostly down hill. We got a good deal on a two night package on a motel in the funky town of Wallace that included trail tickets and shuttle passes.

Catching Up #3 - Elk in the Bushes / Lake Louise

Time to get back to posting from the here and now. We are enjoying breakfast at the the HI/ACC Lake Louise Hostel. In truth it is more like a hotel, but with hostel amenities. It has a restaurant, lounge area, showers and a sauna! The rooms are very nice and it has been easy to charge up the electronics. Wifi is well, funky is the most generous term.

We are in the common kitchen having breakfast. Katie and Nate arrived Saturday late afternoon. We did the quick tour of downtown Banff and had dinner in Tommy's Pub. Then it was off to Johnston Canyon Campground.

Marsha and I spent the day in and out of Banff waiting for the kiddos. We (Marsha)  managed to get laundry done, we did get in a bike ride, a canoe ride, and pick up a ticket for overtime parking. The tourist map they handed down at the infor center said that the lot we chose was had 12 hour parking. The sign on the pole said 3 hour limit like all the rest of the lots ($50 fine).

We did the bike ride out Vermillion Lakes Drive on a bike path. A you head out past the lakes and the wetlands created by them the vistas opened up back towards town. Very nice. I learned that I was as dumb as a bear as at one point we had to go through an animal control gate that kept animals off the highway. I could not figure it out until some other riders came from the other direction and quickly lifted the latch.

On the way out we passed the Banff Canoe Club where they rent kayaks and canoes. On the way back we got a text that Katie & Nate were being delayed at the rental car counter. So, we did an hour rental on a double kayak. We cruised First Vermillion Lake which was the the typical blue/green of a glacial fed lake. On the way back there was a small creek that entered the lake near the boat dock. We went up the creek  a few hundred meters. As we rounded a corner there was an elk browsing in the low brush. Big rack as all elk do but was cool to see how it lowered its head and stripped the leaves off the branches by ripping up. We were able to paddle by quietly up stream, and then float by quietly in the slow current. It was very cool.

I am being told that breakfast is now over, and we have to get our rears in gear. Much more to wtrte about from yesterday's hike to Lake Sherbrook, and the visit to Lake Louise. Moving pictures off of various devices and getting them up to a cloud space where I can get them into the blog still is a pain because of the wifi issues.

Looks like a canoe ride on Moraine Lake this morning and packing for Stanley Mitchell Hut (or a round in the sauna if I get my way) today.

Biking In Waterton

This morning we had a bit of a logistical twit to figure out. Next Monday is a kind of Canadian holiday. They call it "August Long Weekend". New to us but it means that it is absolute peak season in Waterton. We have been pretty good at working the jigsaw puzzles of reserved campgrounds versus "first come first served" campgrounds.  We took a short recon ride this AM to check out the large first come first served campground to our north, Crandell Mountain, as our reserved campsite in Waterton Townsite expires tomorrow morning. It will be tight but we think we can squeeze it if we are there at 8AM to put our name on the waiting list. If you are leaving you have to be out by noon so, we will circle back just after lunch to see if we made the cut. It is about 20 miles out of town, and much more primitive. However it is in a beautiful valley and offers easy access to a couple of hikes we want to do.

If we get a site we will park it there through the weekend. If not it is northbound to the provincial parks of Alberta. We hope we get one as Waterton is a good set up for us. There is a small grocery in town and we have enough basic foodstuffs. We would be able to do a load of laundry just before Banff and there are places to eat.

After we reconned we came back to town and biked out of town down a bike path that runs about 1looking back into the US. 0K out of town back to the park entrance, along the shores of middle and lower Waterton Lakes. Great views of the rangeland leading up to the park and on the way in great views of the mountains that ring the Upper Waterton Lake

Trail had short steep ups in parts and I could really feel the effects of being at altitude. Very hard to recover my breathing after a short up. The wind runs down valley and picks up in the afternoon, the ride back was into a tough headwind of easily  30-35km per hour, sustained. It was a long slow pullback to town, through the wind. We did get to see a demo of Blackfeet dancing.

Showers and then pizza in town for dinner!

 

Paul Bunyan Trail / Lake Bemidji State Park

Short post due to limited wifi and limited ability to charge electronic devices. Camping at the park just outside Bemidji. Got in yesterday evening. Biked into town today and then out onto the Paul Bunyan State Trail, a paved railttra that runs about 30 miles and connects two recreational areas. An old railbed 20 feet wide and paved. We did a little under 30 miles out and back as we have reservations on a pontoon boat ride / nature talk after dinner. 

Photos from the ride: 

Michigander Day 1

Halloween themed rest stop on Michigander Day 1. Enjoying pm at the beach at Burt Lake Staye Park.

Mille Bornes & The Michigander

After a quick trip through Frankmuth's taste of Bavaria, we are now just about 1000 miles into our trip. Tonight we can pay Chenoygan Regional High School the starting point of the 2015 Muchigander Bike Ridr. We will take part in the two day section. 

Sunshine Of My Love

Sweetness and the Hopeville flyer can back from a short trip to the bike-spa of Sunshine Cycle-Works in Colchester. Chris and the boys did the final pre-trip tune up, squeezing in two customers who have little regard for time constraints during the busiest repair week of the year. These guys are the best!

Here is one for you guys:

Sweetness and the Hopeville Flyer

I'd like to introduce our two travelling companions, our trusty bikes, Sweetness and the Hopeville Flyer. We hope to do a lot of riding on our trip, and have scheduled stops at several areas with  rail trails. The Rails To Trails Conservancy has been doing a wonderful spotlight series on Facebook in recent months highlighting great rail trails across the country. They are using their great TrailLink service to provide information. We have altered our cross country route bending it here and there to visit some of their suggestions.

The Hopeville Flyer

But I digress, from the two stars of this post. The Hopeville Flyer is Marsha's Specialized Tricross. We had been looking for a touring bike to match my Trek 520 for a while. We looked at several, but on the advice of Chris at Sunshine Cycle-Works, we chose this cyclo-cross bike. Not a true touring bike, but once Marsha sat on it and took a ride around the parking lot we were convinced. I have never seen a better fit between rider and bike. She and that bike were meant for each other.

It got its name from our full panier trip to Hopeville Pond State Park last summer. The trip let us know that 60 year old bodies react less kindly to bike touring that our 20 year old bodies of yesteryear. We crawled over backroads, spent a restless night and came home even slower over two hot summer days, finishing in a thunderstorm. The Hopeville "Flyer" received its moniker on this trip, strictly tongue-in-cheek.

Sweetness

Sweetness gets a bit more complicated. It is a Trek 520 touring bike a veteran of roads and rail trails across New England, New York and PEI. It is a full touring bike, sturdy, long and steady. Riding Sweetness, is like driving an 18 wheeler on the highway. A typical road bike is like a nimble sports car. Sweetness is big and heavy. It takes a while to get her up to speed, she climbs hills willingly, but slowly, loves long flats and even better, long down hills.

Her name comes from Stephen Colbert's satire on The Colbert Report. It is his name for his .38 special revolver. Stephen has a "special" relationship with this hunk of metal. Sweetness is so much more than a revolver and Sweetness the bike is so much more than a bike to me.

Here is more on Stephen's Sweetness - http://wikiality.wikia.com/Sweetness

and on the show here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/pkoboa/in--60-seconds---sweetness

and here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/5i29xg/supreme-court-justice-sweetness

GPS Madness

In an attempt to dial in our bike computers to match each other we spent most of our ride yesterday fiddling and diddling with our settings. We have a "measured mile" on our road (pays to have runners in the family). We kept riding up and down trying to get it right and then worked on it more during the ride. Most maddening is that no matter how we tried we had a difference of 4 hundredths of a mile for every 3/10ths of a mile. Miniscule, right? Except as you extrapolate that to longer and longer rides the differences pile up. If you are trying to coordinate together on a cue sheet or you have a mechanical or medical problem, and you need to know how far away your help is it can really mess things up.

We even pulled out our phones and tracked our bike computers along with our GPS based Map My Ride App. Closer to Marsha's bike computer, but sometimes matching mine and then going back to being closer to hers. There was not one consistent pattern we could zero in on. My computer actually would run ahead of Marsha's quickly climbing to .09 and then mysteriously dropping back to .06 to match her for a while.

There are many reasons why bike computers will vary from each other. Different tire pressure, some type of interference between the cadence sensor and the handlebar unit, or with the cell phone some type of interference between the phone and GPS satellites and/or cell towers. The fact that I out weight Marsha by 100 pounds can change the diameter of my tires as I push them down more.

So, we decided that we will live with it, or perhaps spin my wheel a few hundredths to catch up to Marsha's computer before we start a ride so we even out. The GPS based phone apps we usually hold in reserve as it really sucks down the battery and even with our extra battery packs, the ability to have juice to call for help is more important than recording the ride. Around home for a workout ride or to measure a new route, fine, but out on our western wanderings, an extra layer of security in battery life is a trump card.