My Turn to ride:
I started out from the KOA with directions written down
to the American River Bike Path or The Jedediah
M. Smith Trail. It goes about
thirty miles to Folsom. My confidence
soon vanished when I could not find the first street to turn off to loopty loop
under and around and start on the path.
I stopped to ask directions at a gas station. ( You know, I don’t think
that’s the best place to ask for directions because the people who work there
are often from India or Iran. Rusty
always asks a bank and that has always been successful ) But besides, nobody knows where the bike path
is except cyclists who ride it and that is the truth! I headed off in the direction the gas station
navigational expert told me and knew very soon that I was not going to find
it. Called Willie…Rusty answered J and he said keep
going, it’s about five miles out. So I
did AND ended up on Industrial Blvd with all the big trucks and no cyclist
would dare be there. Called Rusty again
and he said “You must have taken a wrong turn”.
My reply “I never turned! I never turned!! “.
When he finally found me he said you weren’t supposed to turn. “I never turned”, I said. So we retraced my journey and sure enough, I
had made a turn….when I came out of the gas station where I had asked
directions I had headed off in the wrong direction.
HOWEVER, with Rusty’s great navigational skills, and he
truly is excellent with directions, it still took us an hour to figure out the
map and find the beginning of the path.
(Remember, our A. C. maps are ten years old….but I don’t think a current
map would have helped in this situation)
I rode the American River Bike Path for 32 miles! It was absolutely worth the frustration
involved in finding it! I rode thru
gorgeous greenery along the river with parks spaced along the way. The path traffic was what I would call “just
right”. An occasional cyclist or runner
but the path was basically all mine! At one
point about six miles left, I asked a seasoned cyclist which way to go at a
fork in the path. He commuted along the
path everyday but on the opposite one that I needed to ride. He offered to change his route to show me the
way. He was the greatest! But he also gave excellent directions and I
felt confident to ride it alone. There
were some sketchy times when the path wasn’t clear but I ended up at the right
spot in Folsom! Rusty was there to meet me.
The plan for the day was to ride to Rescue (yes, that’s
the name of the town. Wonder how it got
its name) What we thought was an additional 15 miles or so but, my goodness
sakes, it was nothing but climbing from there on out! We decided to jump into Willie and drive
it. As we drove it I was glad I had
opted out-too hot! Too steep! Too late in the day!
We stayed at Placerville KOA in Shingle Springs which
took us another 9 miles off route. It
cost $36 and was hot, dirty and dusty and too far from the bathrooms. But we spent an hour or so in the air
conditioned game room working on the internet.
It was a good day!
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