William Least Heat Moon admonished motorists to get off the interstate highways to explore the nation's back roads in his book “Blue Highways.”
He said that we get so locked into getting to a destination, we miss the surrounding countryside.
The same can be said of bicycling along a rail-to-trail, like the Cedar River Trail that runs between Renton and Maple Valley southeast of Seattle. I've used this trail as a thoroughfare to the rural bicycle routes in the area, but I rarely explore the trail surroundings.
This past month I rolled down there on my Rockhopper and followed some of the dirt paths that veer off the paved 17-mile trail. I stumbled across a wetland natural area that's a winter home for waterfowl and debris left over from an old brick plant.
Cavanaugh Pond
King County has about 8,000 acres of natural resource lands and some of those are right along the Cedar River. One of the most scenic is the 44-acre Cavanaugh Pond Natural Area (at right).
An entrance is in the Riverbend Mobile Home Park, about a mile or two east of the Ron Regis Sport Park. Because the mobile home park doesn't allow non-resident cars, a bicycle is the best way to enter.
The entrance follows a dirt track on top of the levee that ends on a wide, pebbly beach on the Cedar River (at top). It's away from the Maple Valley Highway traffic and a good spot to watch the birds flying around making a feast on insects. In the fall, visitors can watch the sockeye salmon migration here.
Along the way, you'll pass a couple of paths down to the wetlands that comprise Cavanaugh Pond. This is the home to waterfowl, and I spotted some wood ducks and Canada geese while I was here.
Brick factory
Closer to Renton, I poked around some of the debris left behind by an old brick plant. The trailhead for the Cedar River Trail is in an open field that used to be the site an old brick plant. As you ride your bike through this area in the winter and spring before the blackberry bushes start greening up, you'll see clumps of bricks in the levee.
The city's historical guide says the brick plant was launched in 1901 after two California businessmen discovered that the shale below the area's coal seams produced a high-quality clay. They formed the Renton Clay Works, which for a time was the largest such factory in the world. They sold it in 1905, and it became the Denny-Renton Clay & Coal Company.
The factory is long gone, but lots of clay bricks, pipes, and other brickwork spill out of the hillside to this day. These are hard to see in the summertime, when the hillside is overgrown with blackberry bushes. It's still a good place to stop for a free, high-energy snack for bicycling.
March tale of the tape
I'm back on a quest to ride my bicycle 4,000 this year and finally hit my monthly goal of 333 miles this March. I ended the month with 904 miles for the year.
After examining my January stats, I discovered that I bicycled 18% more miles in January 2011 over January 2010, while the amount of rainfall was 18% less between those two years.
This led to my Rainfall-Bicycling Relational Hyperbole Theory, which states that my monthly bicycling mileage is in reverse proportion to the amount of rainfall.
I busted that theory in March, however. I rode my bicycle 348 miles that month, compared to about 260 miles the year before. Rainfall for the period, however, was 6.3 inches, a good 2 inches more than normal. In fact, only two days in March were precipitation free.
Based on my theory, I should have tallied 200 miles or less this past month. However, I put in a good deal more.
This leads to another theory, The Subliminal Cognitive Precipitation Dissonance Theory, which states that after you get used to getting wet on a bicycle, a little bit of rain ain't gonna stop you.
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