There's a major bicycle park in my own back yard!

[elfs]

Kouryou-chan rides!

Who knew? Barely 2 miles from my house is the Des Moines Creek Park. It used to be a housing development back before the county put a major airport right in front of it, so the city took the already flattened roads, paved one of them just wide enough for bicycles, and left the rest of the place completely fallow. There are dirt paths and technicals crisscrossing a large, gorgeously wooded area that, but for the airplanes flying overhead, you'd never know you were near a city.

Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I all rode along the paved route until we came to a fork in the road, took the gravel road to the left past a secured facility hidden deep in the woods (really! It's a semi-automated sewage treatment plant), down under the new creek bridge (complete with salmon ladder concrete retainers), and right down into the Des Moines Beach Park, right up against the sound. The weather was beautiful, which has been a rare treat this summer, and we watched the sailboats and enjoyed a lunch before riding back.

There were blackberries everywhere. Because the summer was so cold and overcast, they're only now coming into ripeness, and Kouryou-chan stopped a few times on the trail back to pick them. Some were good, some were sour, but it was a let more fun than just buying a pallet from the grocery store.

Gorgeous day, Omaha and I had a lot of fun. Kouryou-chan had a tumble, bloodied an elbow, and got home with a mouthful of blackberries.

Comments

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I knew. :) I've been wanting to explore it for some time now. Were dirt trails pretty easy ones?

[omahas.livejournal.com]

We didn't actually go on the dirt trails...Kouryou-chan wasn't ready for that. This is actually one of her first times trying out actual trail riding (going from paved to gravel and back).

Eventually she'll be confident enough that we'll start her on some of the easier dirt trails. But most of the trails we saw leading off of the paved track were pretty steep, so I'm thinking that this is more technical than she'll be ready for a while.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just from long association, but my first thoughts were "what grocery is going to have pallets of blackberries for sale?" and "Aren't you going to get thoroughly sick of them if you try to finish a whole pallet before they spoil?" I've always seen large packages of small fruit like berries referred to as 'flats'; when I read 'pallet', I think of the 48"x40" ISO North American shipping pallet used by the Grocery Manufacturer's Association.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Well... A grocery store would probably have a pallet or two for it's entire stock. ;p

[fallenpegasus]

Kids need more bloody elbows.

Sounds like she, and you two, had a blast.

I've often wondered what all the land off the ends of the runways was used for. I had just figured it was completely fallow and unused.