The Jones Loop is a rectangle. As you might expect, when virtually every road you take is laid out in a grid, it matters not how you zigzag in between, if you hit the four sides of the rectangle, you’ll cover at least as much distance as simply following the perimeter. The route I picked in past excursions varied each time, but the basic box was Hiwasee on the west, Britton Road on the north, Triple-X on the east, and SE 29th as the baseline, which is where I live.
We have to change that, since a critical passage is blocked where the North Canadian threatens to carve up Triple-X, as noted in a previous ride report. Until I know more about the situation, I can’t justify slipping the barriers more than once when I took pictures. So we no longer need to worry about hitting Hiwasee (west of my home), but can start with Henney Road (east of my home). Instead of Triple-X, I’ll have to drift as far east as Luther Road. This still promises that the original 26-mile loop becomes 28 at a minimum, and traverses more of the same route we normally use for the Harrah Loop.
As always, home is in the hills and every direction is at least a little tough. Henney Road north from SE 29th is a pair of mile-long troughs between tough hills at each section line crossing. The first image is Henney Road from Reno Avenue looking back south the way I came, toward SE 15th. The hills ease up the next two miles north until we hit the Choctaw Creek Valley at NE 23rd. Once out of that low spot, the hills of Henney are pretty easy for the next five miles into Jones. Henney is often used for at least two different annual bicycle road rallies, so you can spot paint markings for them.
Jones sits down in the North Canadian Valley. It’s not much to look at, and I’m told the biggest single employer is some insurance processing outfit that takes up half of the business and store-front space in the little village, segmented between buildings on both sides of the street. The main drag is the same as Britton Road, the north end of our box. This route clips across the eastern end of the town proper and we stay on Britton two miles, passing Choctaw Road until we hit Indian Meridian.
We cross several streams feeding into the North Canadian, but the wide flat valley turns them into miniature bayous. Some of the stream beds out here offer deeply wild foliage, with places you could hardly claw your way through on foot. Given the biting snakes, insects and other varmints, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to.
This is real cyclist territory out here. The river plunges nearly straight south for quite a ways. By rolling down Indian Meridian we can pass the State Center School — it’s built right about where the surveyed geographical center of Oklahoma can be found.
Heading west on Wilshire, we can then drop south for a long flat three miles, except it terminates near the “river that eats houses” and the section of Triple-X that is currently closed. This road gets all of the local cyclists training and racing because that zig-zag from Jones, past the school and south across the farmland is virtually flat for five miles.
This is serious farm land, typically covered in corn, wheat or alfalfa. Few things are as pleasant as the smell of freshly cut alfalfa. No McMansions out here; the land is just too valuable for building housing additions. So we head back east on NE 50th, taking that hilly course over the parallel ridges where the river turns back east. The bottom of the far side is Luther Road. This will figure prominently in the planned future ride up to Luther the town. But today we turn south and cross the river valley one more time. Gee, two weeks without rain and the river seems so tame and placid. However, that sand bank wasn’t there a month ago, and I’m told the water nearly covered part of Luther Road during the worst flooding, just to the right of this picture (at the left below).
A little farther on we come back to NE 23rd. It is now the de facto dividing line between north and south in Oklahoma County, despite the surveyed address numbers starting two miles south. It’s four lanes from Harrah on the east all the way across the county to Council Road near Lake Overholser on the west. It runs past the Governor’s Mansion, the State Capitol and all the associated office buildings, and tends to form a cultural dividing line, as well. Out here in eastern county, there is a surprising high density of Native Americans living mostly north of it.
I followed this back to Indian Meridian, simply because for the last bit of the southward leg it’s the quietest and most pleasant way to go. At SE 29th I turn right in front of the Old Germany Restaurant, where I performed a wedding back in May. As usual, at Choctaw Road I dodge over to SE 29th Place and enjoy a peaceful, shady ride for three-quarters of a mile on well maintained packed caliche.
Three hours and roughly 28 miles.
Ed, is that algae on the surface of the river/bayou? Is that normal for your area?
Dunno what it is, but I assume algae of some sort. I took the picture because I’ve not seen it anywhere else in my riding.