Mountain Biking Adventures

It's been a great summer with my mountain biking small group!  We mostly rode at Lebanon Hills but  also hit Theodore Wirth Park and the Minnesota River bottoms.  All three of these places are great places to ride.

For our second to last ride, we went to Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis.  There are some great trails with lots of turns and obstacles, and it's just a really nice area.  There's this one big dirt mound jump that's a lot of fun!  At one point in the ride, Brian Andren stopped in front of me and pointed into the woods.  There was a good size female deer just 20 feet away from us!  Beautiful!  And then we noticed a fawn just beyond her, and then another!  We looked at the deer for a while...they looked at us.  It was nice.  I think that while we were thinking, "Wow! These deer are beautiful," they were probably thinking, "I wish these pesky humans would quit staring at us and move along so we can get on our way!"

For our very last ride (as a small group), we went to a section of the Minnesota River bottoms that I'm rather fond of.  At almost the farthest point (of course!), I got a flat in my back tire.  Arrgh!  Bummer.  Some guys came by that let me use their tire pump, and then I booked back as far as I could make it until the tire pressure was too low again.  Then we walked quite a ways until finally someone else had a pump, which gave me enough air to make it back to where we were parked.  I wasn't the only one riding without a spare pump, but right afterwards I got my tire fixed and bought a pump!  The really serious riders don't only carry a pump, but a whole tire repair kit.  Maybe I'll do that next year!

I really love mountain biking, and it's great to do it as a small group and build relationships in the process.  For more info on small groups at River Valley Church, click here.  For more information on bike trails in the area, check out the Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists web site for trail guides, directions, trail conditions, calendars, forums, etc.

Comments

[Dianna Chabot]

Cool pictures! I am more of a paved/gravel/crushed limestone biker myself, but have been on parts of the MN River Valley. Which specific section did you bike on? I am familiar with the various section,s but none of the pictures looked familiar to me.
You will see a lot of various animals in the MN River Valley. When visiting my grandma at Martin Luther Manor (located right above the MN River Valley) in Bloomington I observed a couple of wild turkeys eating corn kernels set out for them by the Manor staff. Then a few months ago, a wild turkey came strutting its stuff through my backyard and across the street to the neighbors yard. I figured it had probably made a very long trek from the MN River Valley.