The Poudre Trail

On Saturday the forecast was for a nice day, temps in the mid-20s. Sunny and basically a good bike riding day as long as you ignored the possibility of "10-20mph northerly winds" in the afternoon.

So we set out on a ride along the Poudre Trail. The Cache La Poudre is of course the local river.

We found this old suspension bridge fascinating.

It seemed to carry a flume, most probably from the old reservoir behind the pics to the land on the other side. There is no information about it at the site - wonder what it was for?

After we had ridden about 10km, I was Hungry. We stopped off in Old Town at Nathan's fave cafe, Starry Night, where he had stuffed squash with pasta salad and I had plain brown rice with steamed vegies. Ah the fun of a GF/DF diet.

We heard trains tooting lots. It is very common around Fort Collins. Trains toot all day long. There is the train that goes through Old Town, the one that I raced the other day, that has to toot at every intersection, ie continuously. There is a shunting area that crosses two main roads (you oughta hear the fighting about how to fix the problem of cars being stuck for 20-odd minutes at a time! Like dooooods, build a bridge for the cars! Can't do an underpass as it is likely to flood). There is another shunting area that doesn't cross roads but does mean LOTS of tooting at every points.

So we rode along the Poudre Trail and suddenly came upon a train shunting. For the train nuffies out here, I give you one of the grottiest old unloved engines I've ever seen, along with a lovely, well painted one:

The driver hopped out of the cabin and adjusted some points, then the train crept backwards.

Then Nathan said there was another train coming! And there was! The above train was crawling backwards towards the south and this train came from the west:


After 10 minutes of staring at trains and taking a gazillion photos, I decided that it was time to keep riding.

We rode and rode and rode and rode. I forgot to take pics of the river - I thought I would do it on the way back. Best laid plans and all that. Eventually we pretty much cleared town and were out in open space,


surrounded by reservoirs, and with views of the uplift of the Rockies:




and a quarry:

(the conveyor belt was fascinating - about a mile long, no joke! The hole in the ground showed that the soils here must be in part glacial as there are layers of pebbles of varying sizes)

There were critters




and one place even had a red barn!

(I don't know why red barns are noice but they are)

Nathan was getting pretty tired by now but I could see a band of greenery about another mile up the trail, so I rode on ahead. Turns out there is an absolutely fantastic bridge across the Poudre:






I wish I could show you the "film" of riding along the bike bridge but I didn't think to do it as a movie, just as burst mode. The footway of the bridge is made of wooden planks which have curled a bit so the pictures bounce up and down in a most amusing way.

Finally, a picture of the Poudre itself:

We rode back to Old Town for Nathan's afternoon tea (an icecream in a waffle cone) and then home. All in all we rode over 30km, or more than 20 miles. For us that is a long ride!