Exploration

The sun was shining.  I decided to go scout the updated section of route for this weekend's ride to Vancouver BC.

I got on the Burke-Gilman trail and rode it to near the end, where I jumped on the Sammamish River Trail and rode it to Wilmot Gateway Park where I turned north.  This is where I thought that a different route to bypass the first mile or so would be better.  This segment has a lot of right turning vehicles and no shoulder.  As it ended up, my alternate has much less traffic and steeper grades as expected,  but had poor sightlines along with narrow lanes and no shoulder.  I'll change the route back to the original route.

I rode up to the Maltby Community Park then turned around and came back down via the route that I rode on yesterday.

When I got back down to Woodinville I got back on the Sammamish River Trail and took it toward Redmond.

 I considered riding cross country to get back to Seattle, but decided that I didn't know the roads well enough to try that. Instead I took Willows Rd northward.  When I saw signage for the Sammamish River Trail I took that. The Sammamish River, like all the rivers in the Seattle area is highly modified. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to picture the river meandering through the valley via braided channels.  Today it is a big ditch.  The local Native American tribe and some environmental groups, while admitting that the river will never again be "natural", are working to make it more friendly to native species.

At one point I was across the river from the trail riding on roads. I came across this puzzling sign.
The State of Washington has some of the strangest bicycle signage.

Did I not have to share the rode prior to this?  Did motor vehicles not have to?  You'll note that just behind the yellow crosswalk sign is a "bicycles may use full lane" sign, with a sharrow painted in the center of the lane. So within 100 ft I went from not having to share to being able to take the whole lane.  Some would argue that I didn't have to share before the sign, and I didn't have to share after the sign.

Oh well, I just kept pedaling along.

It was a nice day for a bike ride.


.......Road bike........Rollers.......MTB.......Lifecycle....Total
Today........74...............0..............0..............0..............74
Jan..........765.............0..............0..............0.............765
Feb..........248............0..............0..............0..............248
March......183...........0...............0.............0...............183
April........228...........0...............0.............0...............228
May.........200............0..............0.............0...............200
June.........199...........0...............26...........0...............225
July..........246...........0...............0.............0...............246
August.....502...........0...............0.............0...............502
Sept..........661...........0..............44............0...............705
Total........3232.........0...............70............0..............3302