bjregan

Today we checked one more item off my Des Moines area bucket list. We drove up to Woodward to bike on the High Trestle Trail.

Since it would be an out-and-back ride, we couldn’t do the entire 26-mile length. We chose to start at the Woodward end because the High Trestle Bridge is just 2.6 miles down the trail from there.

The bridge is quite impressive and it’s a thrill to be so high up over the Des Moines River and surrounding valley. The remainder of the 10 miles that we rode into Slater were not that exciting. There was a nice city park where we ate lunch in Slater before turning around. But a rails-to-trails is flat and open to the sun beating down and not an ideal ride on a hot Iowa summer day.

Overlooking the High Trestle Trail bridge.

Sunday afternoon ride on Gay Lea Wilson Trail, just down the street from our hotel.

Garden in Altoona on Prairie Heritage Trail that adjoined the Gay Lea Wilson Trail.

Today’s bike ride was along the east side of Saylorville Lake on the Neal Smith Trail. When we left our apartment this morning it was not the trail that we had in mind. We were planning to ride the Chichaqua Valley Trail, a 20-mile scenic recreational trail between Bondurant and Baxter. We didn’t realize that the trail is currently closed for repairs due to flood damages from last summer. We tried unsuccessfully to find another bike trail in Bondurant that we thought we could see on a map. We followed some sidewalks for awhile but then realized that the line on the map was for a railroad, not a bike trail.

We knew there was a bike trail along Saylorville Lake so we reloaded the bikes on the car and headed northeast of Des Moines towards the lake. We didn’t know the name of the trail and missed one of the trailheads that crossed the road we were on. But then we saw a sign for the Visitors Center at Saylorville Lake, and, sure enough, they had maps of the trail. Since we had wasted half the day at that point, we didn’t have time or energy for the whole trail. We rode from the Visitors Center to the end of the trail and back, a total of about 25 miles.

As it turned out, we had picked the best section of the trail. There was a lot of shaded areas in that section, nice views of the lake, and many ups and downs and winding twists to keep things interesting. We learned from another biker at the end of the day, that the section we didn’t do from the Visitors Center to Des Moines, was all flat river bottomland through the suburbs and city.