Another State Trail

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to ride another of the official state trails.  This time I was able to get to do a stretch of the Tomorrow River State trail.  It runs quite a ways, miles and miles, with only one gap in it where you have to take regular country roads.  29 miles from end to end, actually.  In fact, with just a few gaps of several miles each, you could start on the Tomorrow River trail and go all the way to either Green Bay or Appleton and beyond on designated trails.

However, I did not go any where near as far as that.  I only did several miles.  Parts of the trail are relatively open.

Other stretches are gown over and pretty shaded.  Makes for a very pretty ride.

On the open stretches you can look out over the farm land and see quite a ways.  Very nice.

Its late enough in the season that the corn is pretty tall.  I really like the look of a mature corn field

More trees out across the harvested hay fields.  I like that.

A bunch of bee hives just off the trail.  A nice, safe distance so I did not encounter any bees.  Then again, it was evening and I understand that in the evening the bees head back to the hive.

Some stretches you can see quite a ways off the trail.

In other places you can really see a long ways off the trail.  Lots of well kept farm land.

Then again, in other places the trees closed back in again.  Sometimes, as I was riding along the trail, its fun to imagine the trail running along tracks on the trail.  Makes me wonder if the trees and stuff grew as close to the tracks as they do to the trail.  It would be interesting.

And, once again, the nicest thing about these state trails is how they leveled them out among the hills.  Cut down into the hills and raised up the valleys to keep the track bed mostly level.  There are ups and downs but nowhere near as bad as if you were to get off the trail and ride the country roads.  I like that.

Fall is the Prettiest Time to Ride

Fall is a sad time for bike riding because it means the season is coming to an end, at least for me.  I don't ride in the winter.  I'm not nuts.  But fall is also the prettiest time to ride as the leaves turn colors and scatter all over the trails.  So tonight I wanted to go where they would be out and at their best.  We are, after all, nearing peak colors for fall.  So I headed out for a nature reserve several miles from home.

By the time I get off work, get home, get changed, get out on my bike, and ride the six or seven miles to the reserve its starting to get a little dark.  Especially today because it was cloudy and overcast.  There was quite a bit of rain near by but we were far enough away that we just got the clouds.  But that meant it got dark a little quicker.

The trails in the reserve are a mix of soft bark and boardwalk.  No crushed granite.  That means that the going is a little slower when you're not on a stretch of boardwalk.

But it makes for some pretty nice scenery.

This was the first time I've made it to the reserve this season, at least on my bike.  I had forgotten just how beautiful the place is.

And the colors were really nice.  The pictures don't do them justice.

The whole reserve has a rustic look to it.  And they decorate here and there with wooden rails.  Very nice.

You look off the trail either way, to the left or right, and its really gorgeous.

Found one small boardwalk trail not suitable for biking, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that some enterprising bicyclist had tried it at some time or another.  Some of them are crazy like that.  Not me.

Another nice thing about the reserve is that its full of deer.  And they were out and all over the place tonight.  I must have seen 30 or 40 of them wandering around.  Saw lots of people out walking through the reserve, too.

I like the reserve.  Its a real nice place to ride.  It was a good ride tonight.  Fifteen miles even.  Not bad at all to my way of thinking.  For me at least.

The Lord is Thy Keeper

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is thy keeper: The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Psalms 121

A Bikey Adventure

For all summer, if not since last year, we've been saying, along with Blaubeere, that we ought to get together and go for a bike ride.  So we finally picked a day and did it!  We packed up our bikes and headed her way.  Turned out to be the hottest day of the summer, so far, too!  That part we could have done without.  You know, bike riding in 90 degree weather?  Yeah, but we survived.

Anyway, we picked a short but interesting ride.  There is an old train trestle that has been turned into a recreational trail, open for walking, jogging, and bike riding.  The trestle itself is actual about 3/4 mile long so to make it feel more like a bike riding expedition we started from a little neighborhood park several blocks from the trestle.

At the one end of the trestle is a lock, as in the kind that boats pass through.  With the trestle stretched cross the river the size of boats that can get past the trestle is limited to stuff short enough to fit under it, about 15 feet, if even that much.  So the lock allows taller boats to get by.  Right next to the lock was a small "lift bridge", like a draw bridge that could be raised to let boats by.

Its not a real big lock so its still limited to medium sized recreational craft, no big commercial ships.  And, unfortunately, the lock has been closed most of the time for the last couple years to prevent the spread of an invasive species of fish from getting downstream, into an inland lake.  But it was real interesting to see.

In interesting feature along the trestle was on some of the pilings they had installed mosaics.  There were probably six or seven of them, with people's names on them.  Some people had thrown pennies on some of them.

They weren't real big, and there wasn't one on every piling.  But it was a pretty cool decoration on those that had them.

So the ride across was fun, dodging joggers, other bikers, walkers, and a gaggle of moms and dads and their babies in strollers who were at the park celebrating a birthday.  A warm sunny day means lots of people out.

Across the trestle was a nice park.  We rode around a minutes scoping it out, looking for a nice, shady picnic spot.  We finally picked one where we were close to the playground and only had to move the table a few feet into some nice shade.

We unpacked lunch and began realizing all the stuff we forgot to bring, likes paper plates, cups, napkins, and cutlery.  Didn't bother the kids at all and the grownups made do.

Pretty soon we were chowing down on some yummy bagel sandwiches, juice, grapes, and other goodies.

The kids did very well at staying to eat long enough to get some good stuff in their tummies before they wanted to run off to the playground.

This little park actually has a very nice playground.  The kids had a grand time climbing, running, jumping, and generally playing.  And it was big enough that exploring the whole big area took them a while.

Little peanut was fearless, she actually was the first one to climb the rock

Then, just around the corner of a hill from everything else was a giant slide set into the side of a hill.  The nice thing about that is there was never any danger of a fall, yet the slide was plenty long, which the kids loved.

That kept everybody busy for quite a while!

Little peanut, ever fearless, had no trouble at all going down the slide.

Up the hill, down the slide, up the hill, down the slide, up the hill, down the slide, on and on. Loving it.

Then they began to try different ways to slide down, head first, laying down, all kinds of varieties of ways.

Even grandma took a trip or two or three down the slide.

On this trip we saw a variety of wildlife.  One green and speckled frog.  The speckles, however, were just stuff laying on the frog.  But he was sitting right next to a log.

All kinds of water fowl playing on the river.  It was interesting to watch the ducks paddling around, trying all the things they were finding to see if anything yummy to eat was to be found.

Lots of ducks.  Then again, we were not entirely sure what kind of bird some of them were.  These might have been from the duck family but they didn't look like normal ducks.

And then there were these birds, sitting in a big tree next to the water.  They didn't look like ducks at all.  They were a little bigger than a seagull, we saw plenty of those.  We saw pelicans, geese, and swans but these were definitely not any of those.

Right in the shade of the trestle there were hundreds of fish that would swim in the current, holding their position near the trestle while the water flowed passed them.  They were interesting to watch.

Eventually it was time to head back across the trestle to the park and the car.

And what outing would be complete without hitting a local ice cream spot.

Especially on a hot day like it was.  The kids got to decorate their ice cream with whatever toppings struck their fancy.

Gummy bears seemed to be a favorite.

And the afternoon was sprinkled with plenty of hugs, too.

It was a good day, despite being so hot.  It was a good ride, good company, interesting scenery, lots of fun at the playground, and yummy ice cream in the air conditioning to top it all off.  A very well spent afternoon.

Not as it Seems

Looks can be deceiving.  For example, There are times when, if you looked in our cupboard where we keep the breakfast cereal, when it may look like we're well stocked with plenty to choose from.  However, that is not always the case.  Cereals at our house tend to fall into one of two categories; squirrel food and sugar bombs.  The squirrel food tends to last a long time, Brombeere is the only one that eats it and she doesn't eat cereal every day.  The other kind goes faster. Himbeere is the one that eats the most of that stuff.  But its always hard to tell exactly how much we have on hand.

See, Himbeere has this thing about the end of the box.  If there is less than a full serving left he considers the box empty and moves on to the next box.  But he has this thing about throwing away empty boxes of cereal.  Maybe its because he recognizes that it really isn't quite empty.

So what you end up with is a few boxes with only a little bit left.  None with a full serving but all not quite gone.

So every now and then, when I notice that has happened, I will do the "clean up" and finish off the ends of all those boxes.

Granted, I don't finish them off entirely either.  I can't abide what I call the "dust".  Crumbs and sugar.  Nope.

But I actually enjoy a mix, a good variety of cereal.  Makes for an interesting flavor.  Back in the days of soda fountains, when a soda was made from concentrate and seltzer water, mixed in the cup after you ordered it, people would come in and order what was known as a "suicide", a squirt of every flavor available at the fountain.  I was never much of a fan when it came to soda but I do enjoy it with cereal.  It's one of the tough jobs at our house, but somebody has to do it.