Up here in WV visiting my wife's family, and since we celebrated Christmas yesterday I took some of today to check out
North Bend Rail Trail. Lucky for me they live about 10 miles from the Happy Valley Parking on the West end of the trail system. It has rained right much the last two weeks here with some snow mixed in and it was raining yesterday. The trail was very soggy as you can see in one of the photos which made for a slow trip and in some areas lucky to be doing 9 mph at times. I ended up going through five tunnels and that is where I had my highest speeds with it being dry in there between 16-18 mph. I ended up doing a round trip of 62.5 miles with my turn around in Ellenboro. For a rail trail it had more elevation than I thought it would after looking at the elevation profile on
Strava, but it is in a mountainous state. I look forward to riding the entire 72 miles one-way and turn around for a 144 mile round trip this summer when the trail should be dry and fast. It is a beautiful trail and well maintained. Here is the new bike (
Cannondale Super X Rival) I got about a week ago, so this was the biggest ride on it and it is comfortable and worked like a charm. Here are a few photos from the trip.
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| Eaton Tunnel (first tunnel) |
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| Country Trail Bikes in Cairo, WV |
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| A little soggy made for some hard pedaling |
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| Another tunnel |
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| Ellenboro - nice to place to refuel on future trips |
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| It was a dirty ride |
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| Had fun getting it dirty |
