Suggested fun: the Zoo-de-Mack & the Jordan River Valley

May 23, 2014

Suggested fun: the Zoo-de-Mack & the Jordan River Valley

Morels love this weather!

T.G.I.Friday!

It's actually not the weekend for me yet: I work Saturday at the bike shop. I had Monday off for an extended weekend and still feel like I am gathering my bearings from that. The weather has just been too nice and I haven't been able to put anything away! Here's to hoping I can make some of an improvement on that laundry pile while having this Sunday and Monday off... but if the weather's like it has been all week I can't make any promises. ;)

Last weekend was really, really great! It started out with a 54-mile group ride with a lot of my family and friends who I don't normally get to ride with. A few of us have been doing this ride for the last four years or so, and each year it's a pretty big riot. This year my uncle brought up a big trailer so we only needed one vehicle to transport all of the bicycles and bodies to the start of the ride.

So that's how we all fit... (inside of the trailer!)

The Martindale / Schafka crew!

There's a huge variety of fitness level and bicycle capacity on the Zoo-de-Mack, so I consider it a challenge to finish this ride as a group. Bob, myself, and B somehow lost the rest of the crew and finished behind them, which was funny because we were the most seasoned bicycle veterans with our group. Perhaps we took too many bicycle safety checks? Either way, it was a super fun day.

A giant rotten food slingshot... aka "Oh, my bike is making a weird noise, let's stop here"

Bob needed to adjust his headset.

B got a snake caught in his spokes.

On Sunday the family took off for back home, Bob rode off for a few days of bikepacking, and B and I headed off for the Jordan Valley River Trail. We had only explored a little bit of it after the Zoo-de-Mack last year, and I couldn't wait to see more of it. There are a little less than 20-miles worth of hiking trails and we figured the best way to see the most of it would be to combine two of my favorite things... hiking and biking! B devised this really clever plan that totally blew my mind: we would search for morels and set up camp on Sunday, and on Monday morning we would ride our bikes down dirt roads to one end of the trail, and then we would hike back to camp and drive to go get our bikes! We could travel faster via bicycle (which aren't allowed on the hiking trails, fyi) and then hike along the river all before having to make the trek back home. We were able to dink around our usual amount while exploring and were still in the truck well before sunset. The Jordan River Valley trail is absolutely stunning. We heard a million different types of birds, had to climb over logs that were pretty fresh with beaver bites, the entire forest floor was covered in ramps (sweet onions), and we got to jump across logs and moss-bridges all along the waterway. The dirt road we rode on was sandy and took us past some cute little waterfalls and gullies. There's a fish hatchery up the way from the Pinney Bridge campground, where we left our bikes before dipping back on to the trail. Hatcheries have always been cool to me, so of course we spent some time checking the place out. They had instant coffee and hot chocolate in the visitor's center which I was so excited about because I was dying for a coffee! Seriously check out this trail if you get some time. The day trip we did was really great but there was still so much more to explore! I am tempted to hop back in the truck and to do the trip all over again this weekend. These pictures don't do this trail justice: