Thursday, January 8, 2009

Denver's Cherry Creek Bike Trail

In August, I had to blog on WordPress because Blogger had locked me out. So in "honor" of our current harsh winter weather, I've decided to move some of those warm-weather posts from WordPress to here.

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We parked at the Wheel Park/Olympic Park complex near our motel and biked 19 miles on both the Cherry Creek Spillway Trail and the connecting Cherry Creek Trail segment within the Cherry Creek State Park. The photo below shows some of Denver's tall buildings in the distance as seen from the high point on the Spillway Trail...



... and the prairie dog community along the Spillway Trail seen below.



We had been told that the paved bike trail circled the entire reservoir, but that was incorrect. The state park and reservoir are quite large, but the trail only nears the lake for a short time as seen below...



... but most of the time the reservoir is not even in sight. In fact, part of the ride is squeezed between the Interstate and the immense earthworks for the water impoundment dam.

Due to our rain-delayed start, we knew sunset was drawing near, and when we realized the trail didn't completely circle the lake, we worried about getting lost and being caught by darkness while still far away from the van. Fortunately, the combined satellite view of Google Maps with the iPhone's GPS feature saved the day, showing us the streets to take through a subdivision and then the unmarked dirt trails through the dog exercise area to get us back to the Spillway Trail and then back to the van. What an adventure!


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