After riding up then down breathtaking Spearfish Canyon, Barry turned around to ride up it again, and I chose to stay in town riding the flat roads and pretty paved bike path through parks, the city campground, and cute neighborhoods. Here's some of what I saw on this beautiful day. Paisley liked Spearfish too -- especially when the sun came through our hotel room window! Stay tuned as we continue our westward journey!
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I haven't posted for awhile because we've been so busy cycling. The weather has been gorgeous, for the most part, and we have been taking full advantage of the springtime. Barry (the animal, or is he a machine?) has over 4400 miles on the year so far, and I have over 2200! This is shaping up to be one of our best years of bicycling ever. Lately we've discovered some great places to ride that we hadn't been aware of before. One is Lee Boulevard in nearby Leawood. This long street is flanked by beautiful trees, homes, a small park, and has some fun (?!) rolling hills and a decent shoulder in most places. We can ride from the north end down to the Leawood City Park and back, and do repeats if we want more miles. It's a really fun place to ride with fewer stop lights and stop signs than some of the other "neighborhood" rides around the area. Here are a few photos I took of sights alongside Lee Boulevard. From scanning his KC area cycling map, Barry also found a different route into downtown Olathe. Before arriving downtown, we'd do some serious climbing in Mission. This is one of the areas around the KC Metro that certainly proves that Kansas is not all flat. We had just climbed up this long hill when we turned around at the top and saw this sign. And this was just one of many hills we encountered that day. Another day, Barry wanted to show me a way he'd found to get out to the "country", or as rural as you'll get around the outskirts of KC. After riding to and through downtown Olathe, we arrived at Lake Olathe, which looked like a great place to paddle a kayak or canoe. It was very quiet on this mid-week day, but I suspect it gets busy on the weekend. As we rode further out, there was a small airport and some aviation-related industry, but it was definitely rural, with wide-open stretches of road. There were plenty of birds singing and flying about, including an abundance of Meadowlarks. We also had the incredible fortune to see a pair of beautiful Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers. I wish we'd had Barry's camera as mine only has a 3x zoom, so this is a bit blurry, but you can still see the long tail. They were gorgeous, and this one stayed on the fence a long time as Barry snapped away. On the way back from this ride, Barry's rear derailleur cable snapped, meaning he couldn't shift in the back. This was most definitely NOT good, since we had hills to face in the miles ahead. Fortunately, our guardian angel must have been riding along with us, as we were only about a quarter mile from a bike shop I'd noticed in historic downtown Lenexa. So, we stopped in. The shop (Velo + KC) is quite unique, and we got to talk to the owner, who also roasts and sells coffee beans, so it smelled fabulous inside! He is a bike builder and has some interesting bikes and unique gear in the shop. They were able to repair Barry's cable quickly and get us on our way. In the meantime, it was fun looking around the shop and dreaming of new bikes. Passionate cyclists believe you can never have too many! At the end of this ride, we stopped in at Sheridan's for a treat. Barry figured out a back way to get to it, since it's on very busy 75th Street in Overland Park. Now we're in trouble! Fortunately we're burning enough calories on these long rides (this one, for instance, clocked in at 55 miles) that we can eat frozen custard and get away with it. He got his favorite, Mocha Almond concrete, and I got a Mexican Chocolate concrete with whipped cream. Yum! Another ride took us out on the Indian Creek and Blue River trails to Alex George Lake in KCMO. And back to Sheridan's for another treat on the way back. This time, Lemon Lush concrete for me and "Mucho Mocha Almond Wowieccino" for Barry. Absolutely delicious and very refreshing as the day was unseasonably warm -- upper 80s by then. Here are some miscellanous photos I took on other recent bike rides of just a few of the glorious May flowers in the area. Tulips of all varieties are widely grown here, and that's just fine with me as they've long been one of my very favorites!
It has never ceased to amaze me how much more you see when pedaling around on a bicycle than from a car. Even familiar places provide intriguing and sometimes beautiful sights. And places we've never been before, when seen from our bicycles, are all the more vibrant than they would be through the windshield of a car, whizzing by at a high rate of speed. Not to mention how much more accessible these sights are. It's so much easier to stop for a closer look -- at a flower bed, a beautiful waterway, a bird building its nest, public art, an interesting house or building -- when riding a bike. Bike parking is usually as simple as leaning your "steed" against the nearest tree. Yesterday we rode down Santa Fe Trail Drive through old town Lenexa, KS into Olathe. This is where the old Santa Fe Trail went through Kansas in the 1800s. As we turned off the road onto a paved bike path, we were delighted to come across the Santa Fe Trail Heritage Center and Mahaffie Farm Historic Site right beside the trail. What a pretty place and a great photo opportunity! Immediately beyond the Heritage Center along the trail lies the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm historic site, where the Mahaffie family operated an inn and later a stagecoach stop for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail in the 1800s. Quickly we stopped again, and as luck would have it, were even able to get a shot of the stagecoach as it went right by us around the track. It was fun to be riding our bicycles along an historic trail and imagine people riding horses along the same path (unpaved at that time, of course) many years ago. Earlier in the month we had ridden north on the Gary L. Haller bike trail to its northern terminus and were pleasantly surprised to run across a pretty park-like area along the Kansas River at the end of the trail. I later did some research and found out that this area is called Nelson Island. There's no parking at this end of the trail, so if you arrive by car, you'll have to park approximately two miles away and walk or cycle to the river. The trail has many bridges over waterways. This bridge leads to Nelson Island on the far side; we were just coming back from the trail's terminus and starting to head south at this point. The Haller trail also supports the longest bluebird trail I have ever seen. I have heard the unmistakable twittering of bluebirds while riding along the trail and have occasionally seen one flying out of one of these boxes. The folks who maintain this trail do a great job rigging up predator protection of the nest boxes to keep snakes, raccoons and other predators from destroying the nests or getting the eggs or nestlings. Notice the mesh around the hole and the spikes on the pole! I found this tidbit online and was amazed to discover that there are over 330 nest boxes in area parks (Note: JCPRD = Johnson County Parks and Recreation Department): "...the Kansas Legislature designated JCPRD as “the Bluebird capital of Kansas.” With more than 330 monitored nesting boxes in seven parks, more than 1,400 bluebirds are fledged, or developed enough to leave their nests, each year. This includes more than 120 nesting boxes along the Haller trail, making it very likely that visitors can catch a glimpse of these magnificent birds." Here are some other photos I've snapped on our bike rides recently. The flowers and trees have been so gorgeous, I've tried to capture them when I could -- before April slips away. In addition to all the beautiful planted flower beds like those pictured above, there are dandelions blooming all over town now. Although we think of them as weeds, en masse they are actually quite pretty in the green grass, I think! I never fail to see interesting and pretty things as I ride along, and for every photo I take, there are four or five more I don't take because I'm huffing and puffing up a hill, or flying down one, or traffic doesn't allow. The next time you ride your bike (or take a walk), take your camera along -- you might be surprised at what you see along the way that you'd miss in a car.
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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