Bike Trips

 How about some pictures from when we were out riding the bike? These pictures are from a couple of trips not one big trip.

Right after we changed the flat tire, we stay close to home just in case the new one isn't good. That's happened before. The closer trail is totally rocked up. We tried to ride those rocks for all of two seconds before we couldn't stand it and got off!

Looks like the whole way is all craggily rocks. Guess we have to go another way.

We biked on the sidewalk next to the street until we came to this other connection to the trail, and again out here it's still rocks. Fortunately there are plenty of other paths to take around here, I'm sure they won't leave that trail unfinished for long, it's usually a busy trail.

While biking past the shopping center, we see this banner in the window of a Chinese restaurant. When was Year of the Mouse? Normally I'd say "slackers!" but with the pandemic and all... I just hope they are okay.

This deer was getting some water out of this creek near the sidewalk. It was doing the whole "stare at us like it wanted to have a conversation" thing. Cute.

Those odd dark-outlined clouds looked like they were put up in the sky like CGI movie elements. Very weird.

There was one weekend where storm clouds chased up back inside both Saturday and Sunday. It was so hot that we probably would have welcomed the rain, but those were supposed to be lightning storms, so obviously gotta get inside from those.

Finally got a really good day and hit the D&R Canal trail. We didn't go this way at all last year due to the mask mandates on State Parks. Let's see what's new!

I don't remember this brick building! I took a picture to try and read the sign later, but I can't really. I think it says something something Laboratory. Great, is this where the supervillain origin story starts?

Water is water, I'm not surprised this is still the same. Still a pretty cool waterfall spot to check out.

How many times have I taken a picture of the lock? It's still cool. It's not windy today which is why I'm okay standing on the ground here. You think I should dive in?

Is that supposed to be "Locktender's" House, possessive, or are there like, multiple Locktenders, and this is all their house. Haha grammar. Through the screen door we could see a "masks required" sign.

Often the tunnel under this road is too muddy to use. Is that bad engineering, or like, nature? Oh well, the street above is not too busy on the weekends and you can quickly find a break to rush across.

This is certainly new! We call this part of the trail "Horse Plops" because of the giant piles of... y'know... we have to avoid. There's a horse renting place around here, at least there was a few years ago, and a couple of times we've passed horse riding groups. This part of the trail used to be very rough with dirt and tree roots, but looks like they re-paved the entire thing with these micro rocks. There were no plops today.

I've taken pictures of this place before, too. Could you imagine this being your house? I bet if you take our apartment and put it here, it wouldn't be much bigger. Might even be smaller than this space!

You can't tell from this picture, but that's a very steep hill to get down there from the main trail. There's a bunch of no-swimming signs down there, so lots of people probably tried to go swimming here.

There's a stone fortress house over there that we've seen before, still curious about it, but still not enough to go through the crazy overgrowth to check it out. There's got to be some sort of treasures there, you think?

Some kind of bamboo forest over there. Have we seen that before? I don't think so. We might be the farthest north on this trail than we've ever gone before.

Yeah, pretty sure we haven't seen this other lock. But I was pretty sure we had gone up this way before. There was somebody fishing right at the waterfall. Is that where the good fishing is? I don't know much about fishing.

There's a whole 'nother house thing up here, and a message for Victor on this bridge. Lucky guy, Victor.

We kind of wanted to keep going. It was not too late, but kind of. And we knew it would take a while to get back. We reluctantly turned around.

Not sure where that bridge would go, looked like it went right into the forest with no trail. I guess that's why it's closed? Just in case they want to build something over there in the future, maybe.

We took a picture of the map to see if it would tell us where were were, but it doesn't seem to. At least you can get an idea of how big this trail is.

When we turned around to go home we see the name Charrel next to Victor. I'm no police detective, but that kind of seems easy to look up, right? Victor is not a very common name, but surely there can't be a lot of Charrels. And connecting the two names? Maybe that would take facebook all of two seconds to figure that one out. Just sayin'...

On the ride back we stop and notice this tree, and get the funny thought of "those beavers have really stepped-up their game!" Laughed because obviously it was some kind of chain saw, but then... look how low to the ground it is! Did they lie down to cut that or what?

Back at the place where we first connect to the D&R Canal trail. I took this picture to later see how our pace was. The internet map points said we went about 6.5 miles down the trail. And it took us roughly 40 minutes to ride back here from that point. That's a pace of about 9.75 miles per hour. Did we do that math right? That sounds a little fast honestly, but it is a nice smooth trail and we hardly stopped at all. It's about 4 miles here to get back home, so all together a pretty long day!