Cycling: New River Loop

As always, click on any image to see it full-sized. CTRL-click will open the image in a separate browser tab. Having taken this route twice, I christen it the Riverside Loop. So long as it’s relatively dry, this thing should be passable. Basically I ride up past the hospital and onto Midwest Boulevard, north to the river where they did all that work with new dikes and such, then onto that trail the follows the south/east bank of the North Canadian River all the way around to Cherry Creek. From there it’s real easy to take Vickie to Reno and back home. Riding the river bank trails is excellent exercise.

That northern part of the loop along the river was what I once called the “muddy trial.” Lately the recreational riders have come back out because the efforts to save the river banks from washing away created a large parking area just west off the bridge. And with easy access, there’s been a little illegal dumping already. However, the ATVs have been out, and at least a few trucks (based on the size and type of tire print), and even a bulldozer at one point. So that swampy, muddy trail has been beaten back into a pretty decent jeep trail. It’s an easy ride right now.

So I stayed on the bank and followed a beaten path all the way down to Cherry Creek. Again, because of the semi-drought conditions, you can see where vehicles have been fording the creek. I could have; it was pretty shallow, but I knew that by taking the trail along the edge of the creek back to NE 10th, I’d be right next to Vickie Drive and that’s a good quiet route back to Reno Ave. I spotted a new cement plant — just a mobile belt loading rig next to a cement hopper, vast piles of sand and gravel, a bunch of cement mixer trucks and a sign inviting job seekers to become drivers. It’s right next to the massive permanent UniCem plant, offering competition most likely on price per load.

A really good workout when I don’t feel like riding too awful far.