Today was a special day and these past couple weeks have been kind of emotional for me. My son started kindergarten and that tore me up inside, though he is doing great at it. Then this morning, my 2 year old daughter started preschool and though I thought it would be easy, as I pulled away from the church I was fighting back tears as I held hands with my son and said a prayer for her.
Since my son's first 10 days of kindergarten are every other day it just happened that his "off day" lined up perfectly with his little sister's first day and my day off, that meant from 8:30-11:00 it was just me and Bubby and what do you think he wanted to do? Go for a bike ride of course. So we loaded the bikes on the car and drove to a mid point of the local
Canal Trail for a ride. We normally ride from our house to the trail head, but I wanted him to ride a different part today.
Arrived at trail parking:
Put on our helmets and hit the trail, and almost half way into the ride I remembered the camera as we stopped to check out a creek flowing into the Roanoke River.
Bubby is always happy to smile for the camera:
Most of the trail is elevated with nasty drop-offs on either side, but he rides great. The history was that there use to be 2 canals and a system of locks. One canal was for transportation and the trail is on the old tow 10 foot wide tow path.
As you can see, the trail can be pretty rough with lots of rock, or either I took this photo during an earthquake.
This part of the trail goes down under Interstate 95 and as I trying to take this photo Austin got in some ruts and I held my breath as his rear tire left the ground and went sideways, then his front tire, then both, but he rode it out:
We are riding east so you pass under I-95 south bridge then the northbound bridge. There is additional vehicle access to this area so many fishermen and guys looking to go mudding get under the bridges, Bubby liked the mud holes.
He was ready to turn back at this point.
This is the single track through a well maintained field behind a large mansion/estate in town called Lion's Watch that was supposed built by some 70s soap opera star. I'll get a picture of the house another time. I can't confirm the soap opera thing, but Will Ferrell's parents live in Roanoke Rapids and he lived here as a young boy.
About half of the trail keeps you visually connected with the Roanoke River, this is a river sidebar that has more water in it than usual. During the flooding a couple weeks back this river hit it's flood stage for the first time since the 1940s, and actually went about 2-2.5 foot over flood stage, though most of the damage from the flooding wasn't from the river, but from bad drainage in town.
You can see some signs in this photo, these are all over the trail with information about local plants and trees, wildlife, or historical spots:
Also in the last photo right off to the side is a picnic table by a rocky part of the river, a great place for a cool dip during a hot ride, or one night we had to take our bikes and wash the mud from our rims so our brakes would get some bite.
Much of the trail is decently graded and groomed with this crushed gravel/sand stuff. It rides smooth, but can be slick and washes out to bad ruts easily, and it tastes bad... just trust me on this one.
We're both riding rigid, but he's on 16s and I'm on 29s, so he had it nearly twice as rough as me:
Back at the trail parking area:
(he looks a little like "FIL" here. :lol: )
My sweaty little man and me:
Off to Burger King for something cold to drink from their fancy drink machine:
