Summer's Over, Kid
September 7, 2010 by cynick | Posted in mntour
Summer is now, at least from a cultural standpoint, over.
Yes, yes: the first day of Fall isn’t technically for another two weeks, but we have to face facts: the wind is already a bit colder, the days already seem gloomier, and the leaves are already starting to turn.
So, how did I do on my quest to cover all of the Minnesota bike trails?
Answer: Not even close.
Unfortunately, I, as I’ve been telling people, “slacked off by doing work”. For two months of the summer, I was working, and, while my current work situation affords me a great deal of mobility, it, like most software work, just sucked away the time.
In spite of that, I did cover the following trails:
29th Street Midtown Greenway
Big Rivers Regional Trail
Bruce Vento Trail
Cannon Valley Trail
Casey Jones State Trail *
Cedar Lake Trail
Dakota Rail Regional Trail
Gateway Trail
Hardwood Creek Trail
Mille Lacs Soo Line Trail
Minnehaha Trail
Minneapolis Diagonal Trail
Minnesota Valley State Trail *
Red Jacket Trail
Sakatah Singing Hills State Trail
St. Anthony Falls Heritage Trail (Stone Arch Bridge)
Sunrise Prairie Trail
(The starred trails are either only partially made up of former railroad, or, parts of the railroad grade haven’t yet been improved enough to allow traversal by a Brompton. A horse, maybe.)
In raw trail numbers, that’s about 37% of the state’s trails, but, at a total of 264 miles, these trails only represent about 25% of the mileage.
I’m hoping to knock off at least of couple of the longer ones before the snow flies; maybe I can push the mileage to 30%.