What's Great about Spokane Biking

What I like about Spokane biking is that we have it all: Street, road, gravel, dirt trails, no-trails, and multi-use paths like the Fish Lake and Centennial Trails.  What's really great is I can ride to all these from my home in the Shadle/Audubon area, and I can ride all the varied surfaces in the same ride.

One Sunday in October, I started out on one of my usual routes - Dwight Merkel trail to Aubrey Wright to Bowl & Pitcher, Trail 25/100 to Houston Rd to Mission Rd.  But I needed to stop at REI, so instead of heading to Old Trails, I headed back towards town.  Well, first I had to loop around Deno and Mission twice due to to an incredibly faulty sense of direction.  Follow along here:   Sunday Bike Ride Version 8.9a.

Trail:

Gravel:
well, shoot, this is kinda embarrassing, but I must've deleted all my pics from that day.  That just pretty much ruins the plan for this post, but I'll bravely carry on.

So here's a gravel pic from today:

we've got turkeys, too!

Here's a street pic from mid-Oct:

Ok, enough pics.

Today I headed out again.  From Mission I went up Euclid, thinking I'd take this route, except without the hike-a-bike-possibly-trespassing at the end of Jacobs Rd down to Garfield Rd.  I thought I'd find Garfield Rd, head to Nine Mile Falls or Deep Creek and come back home on the Centennial Trail.  I stopped at the Jacobs/Rambo Rd intersection to check google maps but the resolution wasn't good enough to see the roads.  I turned south on Rambo Rd thinking I'd find Garfield, but instead after a bit I found Euclid and turned on it.  It turned into a good climb.  It didn't dawn on me that I was just going up the same stretch of Euclid instead of down it until I passed a house with a '70 Ford Galaxie 500 in the yard.  It looked just like one I passed on the way in.  Everything looks different while climbing up instead of rolling downhill. I decided to head back home the same way, and not do a loop.  You can see the garmin map here: Sunday Bike Ride Version 8.9k. 

I think instead of turning south on Rambo Rd before Jacobs Rd deadends, I can ride this route: north on Rambo, east on Teepee, north on Craig, to Lincoln Rd, to Garfield Rd and 7-mile Rd and back to Riverside State Park territory.  Maybe next Sunday.

Small-Haul Photo Dump

in the meantime…

You know, this flat pizza/porter rack up front is handy for carrying things hard to fit in panniers, and items that need to sit up.  I wish there were some rear racks that came with a wider platform that also worked with panniers.  Might be some out there.

mmmm, dinner from Tortilla Union

clearance plants from river ridge hardware - did not get a

bumper crop

you say it's your birthday

then there's those items difficult to attach to front or rear racks:

studded tires for bike buddy at work who's interested in 

biking through the winter

what photo dump would be complete without a potluck picture?

love that tostitos bean dip

 I break out the BoB trailer sometimes:

raspberry bushes from Judy's Enchanted Garden - hoping to get 

some berries next year

Rail to Trail: Spokane to Seattle and Halfway Back Prep

One summer's eve a long time ago, me and my Fargo headed to the Spokane Amtrak station for a trip to Seattle and then to the John Wayne Pioneer Trail.  But first I had to do some planning and packing, which in my case starts with getting out the plastic bin that holds all my bikepacking stuff, pulling items out and hazarding guesses if I'm going to need them or not.  How many freeze-dried food packs should bring vs how many will I actually use?  Bear spray, first aid kit, wipes, jetboil, coffee - all the essentials. Hammock - maybe not this time.  New Sawyer water filter contraption along with the SteriPen, Platypus Platy 70 oz flex bottles.  Need more chicken/tuna salad & cracker snacks, along with the usual turkey jerky and trail mix to survive on.

I was going to use my Velo-Orange front rack to hold the sleeping back and tent, but it didn't fit on the Fargo.  Its 29" mountain bike tires are too tall.  Next up was the Blackburn Top-It, but I remembered from experience on the Columbia Plateau Trail that it was a pain to securely tie the sleeping bag and tent crossways on it.  Next plan - Revelate harness.  I had a week to go, so I ordered one from Universal Cycles and it arrived from Portland in two days.

For the rear, I halfway hoped to use the Revelate Pika seat bag. But I also wanted to carry as much water as I could east of the Columbia River, so I opted for the rear rack and panniers.  From front to rear I was set: sleeping bag in harness, handlebar bag, Anything cages, frame bag, Topeak bottle holder under down tube, rear rack with tent on top, panniers to hold rain gear, clothes, food, empty Platypus etc. And a Camelbak.

I loaded most everything up and took the Fargo for a spin.  Rode great, perfect.

My only real worry regarding way finding was getting from Seattle to the Iron Horse State Park/JWPT Trailhead.  Debbie and I have ridden the I-90/Mountains to Sound trail from Bellevue/Factoria to Seattle and back, but there are a few gaps and tricky spots.  Then there's the matter of getting from Issaquah to the JWPT.  I was hoping to find a way south of I-90 after Issaquah, but that wasn't looking too promising.  It looked like I'd have to stay along the I-90 corridor to North Bend.

the JWPT is near the lower right hand edge

But through the wonders of the internet I found Chris Rhinehart's JWPT Seattle Start on Ride with GPS.  It follows the I-90 Trail, then connects to the other trails in King County - the Issaquah-Preston Trail, Preston-Snoqualmie Trail, Snoqalmie Ridge Trail and Snoqualmie Valley Trail.  I downloaded it to my phone, along with printing the cue sheet. Then our Internet went out and I stopped researching.  I figured with Chris' route and the King County pages torn out of my DeLorme Washington State Atlas, I'd be fine.

Ha!