Bike trip: Levee Path in Watsonville

Yesterday after having lunch with his sister, we tried riding on interesting trail which is called the Levee Path in Watsonville.
The center of the path is crowned, so I was nervous a little bit at beginning, but I got used to it soon after, because the trail was well maintained and smooth.

Asked him to lead, then he rode away in a moment as if he got freedom on the trail.  Yes, the trail is wide and no cars to worry about.

 
 The view is very interesting to enjoy.

 U-turned and switched the camera.  I was leading.  We saw walkers with/without dogs, cyclists, and joggers.  The temperature was very comfortable.

I turned to go down to some main streets to see the area. Drivers were courteous, so we enjoyed riding very much. The sun was already started down.  Only shadows were shown two of us together.

 
 It is always fun to try riding on a new trail.

Trails ride in Marin county

We reached the parking lot in 40 min.  We started biking along Corte Madera Creek.  Gravel, puddles, and all kinds of grass covering the ground made me thrilled and excited.

The trails in Larkspur and Corte Madera were easy to find, and drivers were mostly courteous.  That made our ride superb.  On the city roads, there are some signs saying "Watch for pedestrians and bicycles."
That is very different from Sonoma County, I thought.  Local government can do many things. 

 
There is one bike path that was blocked by a fence which doesn't show on the google map.  Since the path was covered with overgrown weeds and ice plants, I didn't want to turn around. Luckily a most kind man outside the fence offered to help lift our bikes over the fence.  So we were very lucky.  There is an elementary school near there.  We understood why the fence was closed.  But it would have been nice if there were even a small sign saying 'no outlet'.  That's why the guy sympathized with us trapped the same way as he was with his dog.

 (Should have given up, but it was invited somehow.)

(From this side nobody wants to go through.  Anyway we were saved.)


There were some older cyclists, father and his sons/daughters, older walkers and young joggers on the trails under the beautiful sunshine.  We we enjoyed a very relaxing ride today.

For us how long we can enjoy riding is more important than how fast we can ride.  Finally I found our goal recently.

We also tried riding on a street with a bike lane and also one with no bike lane, just share the road.  We were fine on the street with a bike lane, but the share road was very nerve racking for us.  

No more loading bikes, let's pedal!

Arnold drive to Leveroni, Fryer creek Trail to MacArthur St, cross Broadway, turn R on Nathanson Trail.  This is familiar for us now.  Then turned left on Denmark, rode all the way and crossed a busy  St, Napa Rd,  took Burndale to Knob hill to S. Central, and crossed another busy St, Hwy 121, left on Dale and finally got onto Ramal.  When the cyclometer showed 11 miles, I decided to go back.  Because my strength will be limited to 22 miles.

Turned out that was right.  In spite of my whining sound to our home, my legs were still capable to pedal.  Thank goodness!

"Honey, we'd better turn around here."

 "OK, we can go over there next time."

"Let's go back home!"

I found the beautiful scenery over the railroad.

This is the nice trip which we both really enjoyed.

 

 22.7 miles trip ....   
 I quickly cooked Trader Joe's Pork Gyoza Potstickers.  And dipped in Kikkoman soy sauce with Herdez Salsa Verde which is my yummy discovery.  Celebrated with Belgium beer ' Fat tire'.

Hope we will not get sore too much tomorrow.

Novato Biking Loop

Found an interesting route at Walk-Bike-Marin's site.  It's called Novato Biking Loop, 7.1 miles, 43 minutes.
Checked carefully every street last night.  We only knew the starting point at the shopping center.  All the streets were unknown completely to us. 

When I started I felt very fresh and thrilled.  Some streets have bike lanes and others don't, but all the drivers were nice.  Unfortunately the beautiful view of houses and trees on the streets were left in our eyes and brains.  I had no time to stop and take any picture, neither did he.  We were busy figuring out which way to go, and also felt like just passing as quickly as we can before cars come.

But the last long street, Indian Valley Road was scary.  The road was narrow but busy both way in addition cyclists were on both side.  For drivers it must have been scary.  But everybody did well.

When we returned safely to the shopping center, I wanted to ride some to cool down, so we did.

We had a spinach and cheese bagel and a turkey & cheese bagel sandwich with juice at Noah's at the shopping center.  And brought back pumpkin bagels and crunchy pumpkin bagels, they are yummy too.

 

Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility Ponds

Mr. WhP had a hard time to load our two bicycles which now got rear racks, but he managed.  Even though we both were still tired, because we can come back anytime so we decided to try a short bike trip today.

Parked at the entrance of Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility.

Yes, here is the nice entrance of the trail

The peach color sand (Mr. WhP told me that is crushed granite) was very nice to ride on.  I stopped and looked back to take a picture.

This is better place than we expected.  He looked happy.

OK, let's go!

The comfortable clean looking sand road was ended, then gravel road was continued.

I was a little nervous how long I would be able to manage riding on gravel.

But it was not bad at all.

"Haystacks were neatly piled up!"

This is great flat riding!!

We finished riding around the Ellis Creek ponds.

 Next we took the path to Shollenberger Park.

On the way to Shollenberger Park, there was deep sand on the trail, I lost my balance, so I just walked for some steps.  He kept on riding, figures.

Luckily we could find the bridge to Alman Marsh. That was a nice bridge, but we both were busy for riding.

Then, a never expected view got into our eyes.  It was a bumpy very narrow path sandwiched by tall grass growing along the sides, luckily we didn't see anybody coming from ahead of us until the next part.

Next surprise was the long and 2 people side by side wide boadwalk right next to the river.  If you are an active and adventurous person, you will be delighted, but I'm not.  It was hard for me, so when I saw a young girl running toward me, I was off from my bicycle to let her pass.  And that was good idea.

Finally we reached the ground safely.  Obviously we didn't want to go back the way we came.  So we took the busy and fast traffic main road, Lakevill Hwy 116 for a while and finally back to the wide street with a bike lane, McDowell Blvd S, and kept riding the business streets until the total distance was 10 miles.  This was Sunday, so the street was quite and fun to ride.

I forgot my bike computer today, so this is cyclometer record which is always very close to the bike computer.
Time: 1:20:08, distance: 10.5 miles, average spd: 7.9 mph, and max spd: 15.8 mph.