Progress

You can check out the updated progress map from the second post (almost at the bottom of the blog). We will be moving it to a better location soon.

Highlands/Superior Street

What would have been last Friday if I had gotten around to posting this on time, David and I hit the trails again. It was my birthday and a great way to spend it. We loaded the bikes up in the back of my truck and hauled them up to Parkview Christian. After layering on the bug repellent, we hopped on the Highlands trail. It was the perfect time for a ride as the sun was on its way down and the evening was settling in. We took the southern part of the loop first and before we knew it, we were passing the swimming pool and golf course. It took hitting the north point of the Highlands to figure out that we had missed our turn, so we backtracked and picked the trail back up.The northern edge of the loop follows through the backyards of residences. The families out playing combined with the up and down of the hills made it great ride, but David had to warn me a few times to slow down. Once again, we failed to catch our turn and wound up taking the longer ride that follows 1st Street back to the closing of the loop. From here, it was only a couple miles to the Superior Street Trail.Okay, I like to ride by bicycle and I like saving on gas even more. So, more often than not during the summer I ride my bike to work. Better than two-thirds of my ride is near traffic, and I have this to say about it: it's unpleasant no matter how you cut it. The vehicles are loud. You get to constantly inhale exhaust fumes. Traffic is not exactly eye candy. Most of all, riding beside (and sometimes in front of at intersections) can be dangerous due to the sizes and speeds of the objects involved. All of that was to aid my point that I think it was a rather poor idea to place a recreation trail along Superior Street, a four lane consistently busy main street of Lincoln.
The most fun part of the ride was between the Highlands and 27th Street because it was mostly downhill. After that, it was quite flat and monotonous. I wore a sleeveless shirt hoping to tan my upper arms, but even that sun beating down on our backs didn't really put a dent in the white part of my farmer's tan. The trail runs all the way to the intersection of Superior and Cornhusker where we sat and I regained some energy. At this point, I hadn't eaten in several hours and it was starting to catch up to me - especially since I just ran out of water.

We backtracked again (this time it was planned) to around the 33rd Street area and took the south leg of the trail. This part was pretty. We were away from traffic, along the creek (curse those bugs...) and had some trees and grass to look at. It's a neat area. As a reference, we were straight north of Menards, which we eventually found of course as we hit 27th Street at approximately Fairfield.
The truth of the matter is, we blew it again. We aimed to take care of all those northern trails in one night, but we didn't realize that the tail went all the way to Cornhusker Highway. Instead, we took Fairfield over to 14th Street, south to Adams, west to 1st, and back north to the Parkview Christian parking lot. We saw a lot of residences and some pretty steep hills, at least as far as Lincoln is concerned. Incidentally, I ran completely out of energy somewhere back near 27th. Fortunately, David was carrying his Nature Valley™ granola bars and the day was saved once again. Those things are seriously delicious, but then again I was famished.

So yeah, we did 17. 5 miles by my little odometer and rode the whole thing in about an hour and a half. Good times.

DAVID adds: For the record... I forgot it was Tyson's birthday (I guess his present was a granola bar), TYSON's map was not very accurate (that's my story and I'm sticking to it), Tyson forgot his camera (In case you didn't notice). That is all.

Salt Creek Levee/Bison Trails

On Thursday, June 30, David and I were able to hit the trails at a little before 8:00 pm. Mainly, we were just looking forward to getting in a serious ride before I took off for the weekend. We rode about a mile and a half to the O Street bridge over Salt Creek and took the trail south. It is quite beautiful in there away from the traffic, but the creek fosters a LOT of bugs - and we once again forgot the repellent. To the left is David where we stopped for the first set of pictures, near the A Street bridge. Under the bridges, the bug swarms get rather dense, especially after dark. The picture above is on the other side of the bridge, facing south. Lincoln does well in keeping its trails attractive. The camera does a fairly nice job of picking up the colors, though the reduced size and quality does not do this photo any justice. We did not get the spectacular sunset as I had hoped either. Nonetheless, the temperature was so comfortable and with little or no breeze, it was a terrific ride. You can see the trail there on the left side. It has no slope at this point, which I like the most because it lets us evaluate our speed and endurance capabilities.

Below are a couple pictures of the first parts of the Bison Trail on our way to Pioneers Park. The first is facing east on the trail. The second is a little farther along and is some building that I thought was quaint and attractive. We don't know exactly what it is because we didn't look. That area was neat; it had wide open fields with tall grass that made David and I think of camoflouge training. It would be fun for paintball, probably. I did not grab any other photos, but I do have a video of the area. I'll post that link when I get back to Lincoln.
The time we spent in Pioneers Park was my favorite part of the trip. The trails were quite rough and very hilly and we were glad to use our mountain bikes on them. David definitely kept me working hard up those hills. Coming back down would have been a lot more fun if I wouldn't have had to limit my speed because of others on the path (and we weren't wearing helmets either - shhh!). The picture on the right is one of the ponds in the park that I thought was particularly neat. There were a couple willow trees above the path that I had David grab a movie of me under. Again, I'll pose the link when I get back to Lincoln.

We rode all the way to the top of the hill beyond the end of the official trail and enjoyed the view. We saw what we believed was a reindeer up there, as well as bison. At this point, it was pretty much dusk and we turned on our lights and started back. We caught one last video (back in Lincoln) in the trees where all the fireflies were lighting our path.

The ride back was mostly uneventful, although there were times that I rode blind thanks to the thick blankets of bugs by the creek. We were mostly silent for the same reason - bugs are not tasty. All said and done, it was around a 17 mile trek, and it will certainly be one of the most memorable of the summer.

About this blog

Our summer 2005 goal is to cover every Lincoln trail in the Great Plains Trail Network by biking, rollerblading, or running on them all. The No (Lincoln) Trail Left Behind blog will chronicle our adventures with stories and pictures (and perhaps even video). It is an online scrapbook. Admittedly, we post for our own benefit; though perhaps our tales may entertain or even inspire others. Lincoln is a beautiful city with much splendor that can be seen only on its trails. Every resident should take advantage of them.

David has posted a map showing our current progress already. Having set the goal in late June and then acquiring a new bike, a pair of rollerblades, and some accessories, we initiated our mission on Monday June 27th. We will continue to post new maps as we complete trails. Hopefully we can bring the project to a close by the end of September at the latest. Onward!