Last Thurday (July 9), I finally reached 1,000 miles of riding so far this year. I’m way behind where I’ve been the past few years, mileage-wise. Last year, hit 1,000 miles on May 14.  In 2007, it was May 27. Each mile is much harder earned here in Pennsylvania, but in reality, I have not been able to make riding as high a priority as I would like.

During my ride that day, I wanted to explore a path and another area that Sarah and I had discovered on foot the night before. The path follows the railroad tracks and leads to some other levees and some kind of flood control center. It’s listed as a Flood Basin on topo maps. I have gone right by this path many times, but never even noticed it.

View Exploration 07/09/2009 in a larger map

Unfortunately, there were some construction workers on both sides of the flood basin, so I didn’t get to explore it as much as I had hoped. Instead, I further explored the area by the railroad tracks. This wasn’t great riding — lots of loose gravel and large rocks. But it was an interesting alternate route, and more direct than the roads.

I only rode by the tracks for a little while. Then, I decided to head up to the Back Mountain Trail to see if they had replaced the bridge yet. I found that no, they had not. Unfortunately, the trail is in worse shape than before. There were numerous mudslides and rockslides, ostensibly during one of our recent storms. A lot of rocks and mud had washed out onto the trail, and water was draining very poorly.

I felt like riding more, and took a meandering path home. I hope that someone will fix the Back Mountain Trail. If they had a workday or something, I’d try to show up and volunteer.

File under: Bicycling, Mixed Terrain