Wednesday

Big road ride today, that's been a while. We're checking out the Neal Smith / Ding Darling Refuge trail today, which connects Ankeny and Polk City to Downtown DSM. There's an easy potential for 60+ miles here but we would be slightly time limited toward evening. Doing this as an out-and-back makes it easy to manage time because you just use up 40%-50% of your total time and, provided you're not so burned out that you slow down, just head back and everything works out about right.

Heading out, we use the new cycle/ped bridge again. I can never remember what it's called but I like the construction. It's made of three arches, two of which are lying down opposing each-other with cables up to the vertical arch. Some more pictures at this site here: 

Rolling on some inter-urban trail past the Botanical Center where there's major construction going on.

Out on the Neal Smith trail, there's a large section seeing major shoreline erosion from the river. My first guess would be that this is caused by the river running at an elevated level but there were permanent warning signs installed well ahead on the trail so there must have been a steep disintegrating bank here for a while.

I don't have a great picture of this but just to the left of Corrine's head in the shot below, there's a small Asian man jumping as high as he can, trying to pull a few mulberries off the lower hanging branches. There were several areas out here that had what looked like a giant oil slick/stain on the pavement because of all the mulberries.

We make it to Saylorville Lake, which greets us with a nice long curvy descent through open meadowy landscape. Somewhere around here is where the big climbing started and continued to Polk City. My Garmin showed something like 1,300ft of elevation gain / 2600ft elevation change. At one point on the way back, I was descending at over 30mph while still on the brakes!

Arriving at a campground that we passed through, there was a slow speed zone. 

And speed limit demolished (while pretty much coasting, haha).

Another big drop out of the forest into the sunshine along this dam. I don't know what lake is on the other side, it's not Saylorville anymore. 

We turned around here at Polk City in order to ensure enough time to get back. About 45miles for the day and a little over 3hrs moving time. My Garmin also calculated that this took 2,600 calories! Time for some ice cream. 

Lots of wildlife along the refuge, including tame deer. 

While fording flood water across the trail, I followed these baby ducks for a while before they headed off into the river. 

Tuesday

Out earlier with more time, we decided to try a new trail today which is located in Johnston. Many of these urban "wilderness" areas are very close to rivers so there is always the possibility of flooding. 

After remembering insect repellent, we are off to explore the Sycamore Trail System.

The photo below is indicative of a recurring theme. 

We had to re-route on the pavement to escape flooded areas. The river is so high that these trails barely work. 

Doing this on my mountain bike, I was glad there were only a few miles of pavement.

One of many neat rest/camping areas out here. To describe this system in a word: flow! Everything is well manicured and designed to be ridden fast. It sort of gave me a feeling more like west-coast designs v/s the tight switch-backing type of trail which is more common around here.

There were several sections along power-line roads, which is always fun.

We were fortunate to have no precipitation while on the bikes. It certainly would have turned into a total mud bath, requiring lots of hiking to get back out.

The trip home, however, was a different story. The clouds blazed down rain and hail on us to the point where some vehicles were pulling off on the side of the road to wait it out. 

Variety is the spice of life and nothing truly great is easy. Good trip!

Monday

Today we are riding on Center Trails from the Ashworth Park trailhead. We did a bunch of other errands around town before riding so we were pretty short on time but still fit in about eight miles of these winding trails. I don't have many pictures of the actual trail scenery because any time we stopped, large clouds of voracious mosquitoes would desend for a meal. This would be a tie for worst mosquitoes I've ever experienced. Overall it was good though as we thankfully didn't have any mechanical issues requiring stops.

I'm not really sure what's going on back here but the construction site keeps getting bigger. 

Staycation Rollout

Corrine and I decided to try something new for a spring/summer vacation and will be using our home for a hub and doing/seeing things which can make a day trip. It does not offer the wide open spaces and solitude we are accustomed to when we travel, but the hope is that it will be generally less strenuous and offer more recovery.  For the initial staycation day, the plan was to see the DSM farmer's market and have a ride afterward. 

We rode into the downtown area and parked our bikes at this extremely expansive and newly finished trail-head / park. 

We found a truck selling sausage/egg biscuits which were being made on the grill right there. They were fantastic. 

There were two of these bears? wandering around.

The turnout was huge as usual and things bordered on crowded. I always enjoy being here - the demographics and culture of the down-town area are significantly different compared to those at home and sometimes I need that in order to recharge. 

After finding breakfast and buying some delicious vegie bread, we walked back to the bikes and rolled out for a ride. The skies were somewhat ominous. By ominous I mean, I can clearly see where rain is pouring down in the distance, ominous. This simply means it's nearly adventure time and we put on rain gear.

We stop for a bit under a highway overpass.

"Trail Closed" sign? Bah, that just means "go look over there". 

We found several flooded areas, some were over the shoes while pedaling but it was all good.

We eventually arrive in Beaverdale for lunch. Doing some riding in bike lanes here.

We rode past this family of geese a couple times and it appears they have new hatch lings out and about.

Arriving back in DSM, we sat around on the end of the new trail park again. It's taken a couple years to get this all finished but it turned out to be really spectacular.

Elkhart TT #3

About midway through the Elkhart TT series and Corrine has picked up some real time trial gear - it was time to try out the aero helmet today. There was no wind to speak of but stiff competition. The new helmet helped with a personal best course time, and a fourth place finish. Enough points were collected to stay on top as the overall leader. I think there are two more races to go.