St. Louis Bike Trails, St. Louis

On the way to the game I took this shot

We hadn't been to Busch Stadium since 2010

You can't really see it from here, but there are a lot of wildflowers
in there along this stretch of the trail

This is the bridge that connects Madison, IL
with north St. Louis, the Chain of Rocks Bridge

This is the bridge in Madison, Il.  It's a one car bridge with
a bike bath, you can see through the bridge down to the
Mississippi River.  It made me super nervous to even look
down but I had to and I took this shot as we moved over
the bridge.  95% of the photos I took this week were in
motion on my bike.  You'll see later on that I didn't power off
my camera and it bounced around and took a shot of my body!

This is one of 2 water intake bridges that serve the
City of St. Louis.  We weren't sure what they were.
See below for details of these structures on the river

This car sits on the bridge...look through the engine and you
can see the water intake station

The beauty of the Riverfront Trail  is they have maps
continuously on the trail.  We wanted to ride back on the
other side of the River but the map still shows that the
trail is marked "future" for about 1.6 miles so we just
double backed on the trail.

Due to the Mississippi River flooding a year ago, part of the
bank washed out and they had a detour around it

I wish I had stopped to see who the artist was that designed this

This is parking for the trail that starts near Laclede's Landing

This was across from the arch and our first
time to see this statue.  We think it's Lewis and
Clark with some kind of Golden Retriever

We wanted to ride up to the arch but it only
has about 75 stairs so we rode around Jackson
Memorial Park, it was beautiful!

I didn't power off my camera and it took this
photo of me....cracks me up!

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Happy Cinco de Mayo Ya'll!  Jackie and I drove Reagan to St. Louis to his forever home in Rochester, Minnesota so we stayed over going back to Charlie Gitto's for dinner (it is AWESOME still....) and a Cardinal game.  The Pirates lost like 14-3 but the game was cool and pleasant.  We had bleacher seats for $13 each.  I loved our seats.

We took our bikes and rode my favorite trail, the River Front Trail, that takes you from downtown to Madison, IL.  The Chain of Rocks Bridge will take you from St. Louis over the river.  It is totally neat and features Route 66 signs, a fire truck and overlooks the water plant intake stations.

Here's what I found about the stations at this website:
http://www.johnweeks.com/river_mississippi/pagesC/umissC18.html If you have time you should get on this website.

To the Chain of Rocks bridge and back, it was 31 miles.  I had major thigh burn afterwards, I could barely walk.  I think I was totally dehydrated!

So, hey, BBC let's plan a St. Louis bike ride SOON!  I've been talking about it now forever and with this blog post, ya'll can see how awesome it is.   Let's bike people!  And don't forget National Bike to Work Day is Friday, May 18, 2012.  We hope to have Memaw come over and help us with the kids so us four can ride that day!  Here's a link: http://www.peopleforbikes.org/

For a map and website of the St. Louis Bike Trail go here: http://www.bikestlouis.org/images/images/bstl_map.pdf