Another biking trip

On Friday I picked up 3 of the adaptive bikes, MN and headed out to Steve's place for destination's unknown. I'm still on the hunt for good places to go riding on a bike. We originally went to Harriman State Park because Steve swore it had paved paths. I figured he was the local expert. He was wrong and there were no paved paths.

Next we headed up to Island Park. We found a bike path just north of the road for the Island Park Resevoir. We parked the truck and unloaded the bikes. I was on one of the Freedom Ryder hand cranks. MN was on the other. Steve took the Scraab (like this bike). This was MN's first time on an adaptive cycle, but being bored she decided to come along. It took her a little while to get into it, but eventually she was lapping me.

The bike path ran for about a mile before hooking up with the road leading to the resevoir. Actually, that was the road that led to the road that went to the Resevoir. We went for about a mile and a half on that road before taking a sharp left onto the road that led to the resevoir. Around us for that 1.5 miles was tall pine trees and crows. I saw a couple of smaller birds that were yellow in complection, but, unlike Josh, I have no earthly idea what they were. There were a lot of horse flies and other insects as well.

Once we took that sharp left on to the other road, we continued to have pine trees on our left, but on our right was a marsh. Cattails swayed in the slight breeze next to us. I kept seeing blackbirds with redheads, and it was a bright red: Red lipstick from a pretty girl, not dull red like ketchup. After about half a mile, the marsh opened up to the lake. The water looked sooo blue, I had almost forgot what that looked like. It looked like cool water as well. This road eventually put us right ontop of the Island Park Dam (note the pic in the right corner of the link). Just below the dam is a hydro-electric plant. I rested there for a little while watching the hydro dam work. Well - that and to let MN and Steve catch up. There is a spot to turn around just beyond the dam and we turned back then. All in all it was an 8 mile trip.

Next we loaded up the bikes and traveled out to "Mack's Inn" and Big Springs. Big Springs is the starting point of the Henry's Fork River. If you leave your truck at an LDS church in Mack's Inn (That's the actual name of the town), you can bike in 6 miles to this picnic/historical cabin spot. There is a bridge at the end of the 6 miles where you can watch the water begin to flow down to the Henry's Fork river and then eventually down to the Snake River. Standing on this bridge looking into the water was just freaking awesome. I saw 2-3 foot trout swimming just shy of being under the bridge. And the water was sooo clear, like clearer than any water I had ever seen. It was beautiful. I wish I had a camera to show you how clear the water was.

Additionally to the trout there was a moment for me to prove my City Kid awareness. MN is training to become a Park Ranger and Steve was born and raised here. So when we saw a creature swimming in the water they both laughed at me. At first I identified it as a beaver. Then as an otter. Steve and MN both agreed that it was something called a muskrat.

Anyway, the reason for the bridge and the trout and the picnic area (oh, and the very annoying rivergulls) was that fact that a German imigrant named John Sack used to live there. In the 1930's he hand built the cabin and built an aquaduct system that used the water coming from the spring to operate a water wheel that produced enough electricity to light his cabin. It is pretty awesome to see what he did. I think I'll go there again.

All in all it was a pretty good day. I look forward to biking there again (now if only I owned my own Freedom Ryder or had the tools to build one for myself - then I'd go on these adventures more often.).