Misson: Ride to My Dad's - Part 1

On the way home from my dad's on Easter I started wondering how difficult it would be to find a good route to ride to his house. Looking into it I quickly realized the Chichaqua Valley trail goes right through Valeria which is only a few miles from his house.
The last bit will be on gravel which isn't a treat on the roadie, but its not really worth it to ride a mtb for all that pavement.

Now, to get to the CV trailhead. I hadn't rode the Gay Lea Wilson trail in Pleasant Hill and Altuna before, so I scoped that out today and added some scouting the road connecting mid-Altuna and CV.

Sometimes its hard to tell just from Google Earth what is what, so you just gotta go out and see it for yourself. I knew I would need to exit the trail and head north in mid-Altuna, but I didn't really like the route I took up 1st Avenue. There was too much big truck traffic and its just a one lane each way with no real shoulder and no sidewalk. One jerkface trucker actually forced me off the road a little bit. If I had took more time to plan this ride I would never have gone that way. Next time I will go further east and avoid the traffic and that monterous bridge over I80. Here is the connector I did (A-B) and the one I'll do next time (C-D).


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The GLW trailhead is on Scott Avenue, so the Mission's Part 2 may be working out something to get me from my house to there, but I've already tried scoping out a route from mi casa to the northeast because the roads around Runnels are very hilly, twisty and scenic. There's really not a good way to get over the Raccoon River other than going out on the 65 bypass and I ain't really feelin' the big nasty highway stuff. I'll hatch that part of my plan later or I'll just start in Pleasant Hill.

It was really WINDY today. They said 15-20 mph, with gusts up to 30, but it felt like it was consistently stronger than that. At times I felt like I was leaning the bike 5 degrees or so into the CROSSWIND, especially on the road between the trailheads. Amazingly the WIND wasn't too bad on the GLW. It didn't seem all that well protected, but I guess it was. Its not a scenic route, but its not completely flat and straight like a lot of multi-use trail, so that is appreciated. It has a little off-shoot that goes around the Copper Creek "lake" . Its kinda cool that it winds around behind a strip mall that has a Legends (Tommy like chicken wingy)

Hey, look Gooses, the ice is almost melted.

On a ped bridge near the Altuna Y. It was very WINDY up here.

It looks like dirt, but its actually sawdust - good thing I'm not allergic or anything.

There must be a joke here, somewhere.

Eureka, I found it.

This was a flood pond in the corner of a farm field right by the CV trailhead. I took the picture because there was actually whitecaps on the water. Did I mention it was WINDY?