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.