This weekend we made the trip up to Midland, MI, to ride on the Pere Marquette Rail Trail. This is a paved trail that runs for about 30 miles between Midland and Clare, MI, and, at least the portion we rode, runs runs parallel to the Tittabawassee River. This was the smoothest rail trail we've ever ridden.
Our Search for the Tridge Broll, however, did not begin on the Pere Marqette Rail Trail. The ride we had chosen for the day, was a loop ride we found posted on the website of the Tri-City Cyclists. The name of the ride, and the name of this post, was theirs, and we thought it a good one. The Tri-City Cyclists have many rides posted on their website, with maps and cue sheets included.
And now, perhaps you're wondering, just what is a Tridge Broll, and why would we be searching for it? The Tridge is really a very interesting, perhaps unique, structure. It's a three-legged foot bridge in Midland at the confluence of the Chippewa and Tittabawassee Rivers. The Broll, one must assume, is some sort of mythical creature that lives beneath the Tridge. Maybe there's more to the story, but nobody has told us, and we're not sure whether we saw the Broll or not.
It wasn't hard to find the Tridge, though I made at least one wrong turn driving into Midland. The Tridge is located in a very nice, big public park along the river in downtown Midland. We parked, watched the locals, unloaded the bikes, made use of the flush toilets, ate a snack, checked out the Tridge, and eventually set out on our bikes. I think we started riding sometime after 10 am.
Here's the Tridge:
The ride started out by crossing the Tittabawassee on the Tridge and heading west through the Chippewa Nature Center in an interesting landscape of wetlands and vegetated sand dunes. The CNC has some very nice bike trails we were able to use for the first part of our ride.
We left the nature center and continued west, into a noticable southwest head wind. Although it was sunny and probably over 60 degrees F, Abbey and Quinn were getting cold. We'd forgotten to stuff their long-sleeved shirts into any of our bags. We simply told them to shut up and pedal harder. It wasn't really that cold, so we tried to distract them from their goosebumps.
The scenery was nice as we rode up the valley of the Chippewa River. Some of the roads were narrower and carrying a more traffic than we liked, but mostly it was pretty pleasant riding. At about eight miles, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we stopped at a small park with a playground where Quinn and Abbey played on a big new play structure with a whole bunch of other kids. We had our second snack of some sort of granola-and-yogurt bars and water. After the stop at the park, we headed north on Nine Mile Road for about nine miles. We had the wind at our backs, mostly, and the road was in good shape, so we made good time and the kids finally warmed. The road took us through some rural residential areas of varying levels of upkeep, and lots of wetlands and birch and pine forests.
At the end of Nine Mile Road, we had reached the Pere Marquette Rail Trail, or PMRT. The PMRT looks very new, or at least very recently re-surfaced. As I wrote above, it was very smooth. It was also a nicely constucted trail; plenty wide, with good signage at intersections, and access to parks and river overlooks along the way. Once on the PMRT, we were headed mostly southeast, so the wind was coming across us, but the forest created a sufficient barrier. The sun was shining brightly, so without the wind, I suspect we would have been quite hot.
We stopped along the trail to take some photos, and Quinn got the camera.
See the smooth asphalt?
The ride description from the Tri-City Cyclists indicated that we were to stop for ice cream at Alex's Railside Restaurant, somewhere around mile 20.1. We wanted to be sure we followed the route precisely, so of course we stopped. We had a late lunch, which was really breakfast - served all day on Sundays - followed by a bowl of Super Man ice cream and a bowl of Birthday Cake ice cream. Alex's was very nice, had great food, and was quite busy. The stop took a longer than we'd planned, but I guess it didn't really matter. Although Alex's is right on the trail, and has bike racks and outdoor seating, the majority of the customers arrived in cars and ate inside. We ate lunch inside and ice cream outside.
After lunch, with full bellies and empty bladders, we had less than ten miles on the PMRT to get back to the Tridge. It was smooth, fast, and fun and we made good time. The trail became more crowded as we neared Midland, with lots of other cyclists fast and slow, and walkers mostly slow, so we had to slow down, too. The parking area at the Tridge was much more crowded than it had been when we arrived. There were people everywhere out enjoying the warm weather.
Quinn and Abbey said they like the portion of the ride on the PMRT more than that on the roads. On the trail we were able to ride side-by-side most of the time, there were no cars, and most of the trail surface was extremely smooth. The PMRT is one of the longest paved rail trails in the state of Michigan, and there aren't many near Okemos, so, nice as it was, it's not likely we'll be logging too many miles on rail trails. We will have to check out the rest of the PMRT, however.
After we put the bikes back on the car, Quinn and I sat on the rear of the van to wait for Abbey and Cindy to get back from the restroom. A stout, grizzly and grundgy sort of fellow, with a bushy grey beard walked past us. He was wearing tattered clothing. He had a green duffel he wore as a backpack, and he was carrying a bag of glass bottles and cans. As he approached, I almost expected him to ask us for some spare change. But instead he said, in a gruff voice that reminded me of Hagrid, "Been out for a ride? Beautiful day, isn't it? I'm just picking up cans and bottles." I didn't even realize it until after he'd gone, but I have to wonder if, perhaps, he was the Broll. A friendly Broll, he was, if he was.
We walked up the Tridge to take some pictures and look down at the water.
On the drive home, we thought the kids would crash and have a nice hour-long nap. No such luck! They were just as noisy and rowdy as usual. Especially Quinn. He'd been the same way on the drive up in the morning. He loves our bike rides and gets wound very tight. Abbey is a little more reserved, so it's sometimes hard to tell if she's having a good time. However, tonight, after she finished reading to me in her room and woke me up so she could go to sleep, she said in a soft, sleepy voice, "Daddy, I had fun on the bike ride today." She's so sweet. "Thanks, Abbey, I did too," I said.
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