The Wilderness Park Trail

I originally wrote this on August 18, 2005, but did not have the photos to put it in. Now, nearly a week later, I have finally posted this entry. The photos are inserted in a semi-random fashion.

With only a week left before classes resume at UNL, David and I knew we were going to have to do a lot of riding to meet our goal. A huge chunk of what was left is the Wilderness Park Trail. (At the time of this writing, we have actually completed our goal. David is responsible for the final entry which will hopefully be posted shortly.)
Judging from the map, we thought we could easily set out from O Street on the Salt Creek Levee Trail, ride down to Wilderness Park, take what looked like a big loop through the park, then ride back north to home.
We learned a few things.
One, David had just moved and was now much farther than before, so he probably rode 2 or 3 miles more than me to meet me at O Street. Two, the Wilderness Park Trail is really quite long. Three, the "Official 2004 Map" found at the Great Plains Trails Network website is less of an accurate tool of location- and direction-finding and more of a vague idea about where a trail might be relative to the city of Lincoln. Four, you cannot pedal all the trails in Wilderness Park; some are reserved only for hikers and riders of large mammals (specifically, horses).
The last fact doesn't bother us in and of itself. I know if I was hiking, I would prefer not to have cyclists on the same path as me for fear they might come bombing around the corner ahead and crash right into me.
However, it would be greatly helpful if somewhere there was a map (paper, cardboard, wood, metal, or otherwise) that could be easily found that showed where bikes can go. I say this because, as we exited the northern-most loop, we could not figure out where the entrance for the south bike path was. We rode south on a gravel road (1st Street, I believe) until we hit Pioneers Boulevard and took it east to a trail entrance which was horse/hiker only. We rode back west and continued south on the gravel until we finally found a bike trail entrance.
Despite the setbacks, we were still in high spirits. We took this trail and rode for probably nearly an hour and had a good lot of fun. We eventually found an outlet to Highway 77 that we assumed was the eastern tail of the trail (remember, map not so great). We were all set to go north on the eastern edge of the park.
Except we didn't.

Shortly we exited to a clearing next to 14th Street, and we were left with no idea where to go from there. A sign said a bike trail continued south on the other side of 14th street. Perplexed, we decided to take the trail since our goal was to ride all the bike trails in Lincoln. Each mile had us believing we would be turning north at any time, but we kept heading south. Along that ride, we both started getting fairly hungry and neither of us had brought anything but water (and it was running short at this point, too). We emerged at a landing next to some railroad tracks with no where left to go. After several minutes of exploration and debate, we decided that the map was terribly wrong and that this was the eastern tail of the trail.

Frustrated, we took the trail back to the 14th Street clearing and asked some other bikers there where the entrance to the eastern trail was. Those, they told us, are the horse and hiker trails. There is only one bike path and it is two direction the whole way.

Swell.

We marked Wilderness Park Trail as completed and started north on 14th Street, passing through a convenience store to get some sustenance. We actually took Old Cheney east to 1st street (the gravel road we had taken earlier) and inadvertently rode part of another trail. From there, it was back the way we came. We made it home at about 9, having started out at about 5, and we rode over 33 miles start to finish.
I tell this story with a slightly negative tone for humorous effect and to help the reader understand some of our frustrations on this ride. However, David and I had some great conversations and overall I think we both enjoyed the ride quite a bit. We just wished we had had some of the knowledge we have now back then!

Closing in on the end...

As David mentioned, we did once again hit the trails on Thursday. I've been out of town a lot over the past few weeks so it was hard to get rides in. I have been running, though, and it made this ride a cinch.

We went north to Lintel Park and started out on the Dietrich Bike Trail at about 8:00 PM, so it was already getting dark. We knew we'd be doing this mostly without light, but it had to be done. Here I am all ready to go!
I think we took this at Lintel Park before we actually got going. I really don't know; I gave David the camera.
The sad fact is, we ran out of good light very early on, so we kind of ran out of good pictures, too. The Dietrich Bikeway is really fun because it is hidden away from the major streets, so it's quiet and you see a lot of parks and residential neighborhoods. This is Pentzer Park on 27th and Holdrege:
On the flip side is the intersection of those two streets. I was over there behind the blue car because I decided to go through the yellow light and David chose not to. He later joined me, only to discover that the trail actually goes northward on the west side of 27th. We decided to continue on the east side and join up with the trail where it runs under the railroad overpass.
At 48th, we discovered that the Dietrich Bikeway ends and we had to pedal north of Fremont Street to join up with the Murdock Trail. Of course, David had to study the map to figure this out, and I gladly lend him the responsibility:
In the meantime, I occupied myself with getting a snapshot of one of the bike statues that are spread around Lincoln. This one did a fine job of representing our spirits:
Yes, the sunset in the background was beautiful. We really didn't get any pictures that did it justice, though.

What ho! We find shortly after joining the Murdock trail that it is made mostly of David's favorite terrain - hardened ground and trail rock. Under normal circumstances, I would agree. However, if you recall, it had rained on Thursday. Your heroes found themselves kicking up mud and rocks, and hauling some of it to other parts of Lincoln (and even into my apartment). The smaller rocks liked to find homes in my shoes in particular...
The Murdock trail passes over 84th Street by way of a bridge and continues on out of town, actually. Someday, perhaps, we can venture a little farther out. As it was, it was already very dark, we had quite a few miles ahead of us, and technically the trail closes after sunset. Here's a shot of Lincoln out there, though.
Back on the west side of the bridge, we stopped to get some pictures and a little water. With this light, nothing turned out very well, but here's a shot from the bridge looking south:
We tried three times to get a picture of the 84th Street bridge and failed on all attempts. I also tried to get a picture of Northern Lights Drive that is right south of the new Walgreens on 84th, as well as a couple pictures of the moon, and nothing came out well. We gave up on taking pictures at this point.

About a block south of O Street, my sister called me and we chatted about cell phones (ironic? maybe) for a few blocks until David and I found the Mopac trail, and we started back eastward. We had to slow our pace a little to keep from out-running our headlamps. Mopac is hidden away from roads much like Murdoc, so we were in the dark big time. Honestly, we should reride this trail when it is light. We might yet, since David would like to continue riding it out of town.

Someone east of 33rd Street, my friend Shilo called and we talked some until David and I found the end of the Mopac trail. I'm still not clear about where exactly we were, but I don't recall seeing Peter Pan Park, so I'm not sure we made it that far. In any case, we were very close to Holdrege Street at this point, so we made our way up there and then west until we found Lintel Park again.

It was a fun little right, about 16.5 miles. I'm not sure if there are little bits and pieces of trails that we need to pick up yet, but I think the major chunks we have left are:
-the 84th Street trail south of the Mopac trail crossing
-the 70th Street trail that starts a little north of Van Dorn and goes south (and eventually west)
-the Wilderness Park trail (which we decided not to do Thursday because of the rain)

David may correct me if I'm wrong. We have one week until school starts for me, but should have several weeks of good weather yet, so I think we can finished our goal.