Friday (Well, Saturday...) Bike Trail Blogging Week #2

Photo album from this week is located here.

Well, I apologize that I didn't have a chance to do a "position" blog entry this week or get this up on time. It's been a long couple of weeks personally but things seem to be getting back to normal so I had some time to take a few snaps of a couple more of my favorite places on some of Austin's bike trails. Unfortunately, part of the problems of the last few weeks has been an intermittent Road Runner connection and so while the connection is up, I'm working on the blog. I guess I could always go to some coffee shop somewhere...

Anyhoo, the first picture is a follow-up from last week's post. On Friday morning, there was one of the Great Blue Herons hanging out in the area that I took a photo of last week (most of the Herons I've seen seem to hang out in this one little area and just north next to the Waller Creek building). This guy started out in the creek but when I tried to move in to get a closer shot, he flew up into the tree. I guess it would help to have a decent camera with a good telephoto lens (this camera is just a barebones 2Mpixel Kodak).

This week, I decided to highlight 2 areas: a small single-track trail in the middle of Pease Park and a bend of Bull Creek directly underneath MoPac.

These next few shots are the single-track trail that runs next to the main trail through Pease park. These shots are facing north and Lamar is about 1000ft to the right of the pictures. The camera really doesn't do the grade of the trail much justice but when the trail is wet, the limestone "boulders" become quite slick and can be a bit of a challenge going up (somebody recently blocked off the left side of the trail where it was a bit more challenging). There's a frisbee golf hole just south of where this trail pops out.

The rest of the photos are from Bull Creek directly under the MoPac bridges. From the satellite map, this area looks pretty small an unimpressive but it's quite pretty and serene once you get underneath the roadways. From the bottom of the creek to the roadway, it's probably about 80 or so feet. When you're driving on MoPac, it really just doesn't seem like you're that high up but it's a fair distance down. This part of the trail has a few pedestrian bridges that cross roughly at 5th and 1st streets. Again, this camera really doesn't show the scale of the surrounding hills and how straight up they seem to go. There's a few limestone outcrops that would be ok for some bouldering.

Sorry for the lateness of the post. Hopefully, we'll have the Internet connection figured out and back to normal for an on-time post next week.