Check, Check... Biking to Coon Rapids Dam on the Mississippi River

Yesterday I set out on what seemed would be a rather uneventful excursion to bike from Elm Creek Reserve to Coon Rapids Dam. Honestly, there isn't anything really exciting or enticing to draw one to seek out Coon Rapids Dam, so I'm not sure why I had it on my list of things to do. No one said I should see it or said it was special, I just saw it on a map and thought, "huh... that bike ride might be kind of nice."

I was accompanied by Eric who thought that this might be more fun than the single's ward pioneer day 5k run where they dressed up as pioneers and ran 3.2 miles in old-time garb. Not so sure about how much more fun it was though on his end since he had to put up with me on a bike that only has 5 functioning gears... and the lowest gears at that!

After some scenic detours (who knew that you could grow wheat in MN?) we finally made it (what should have been only a 6 mile ride) to Coon Rapids Dam. There were some guys set up in the grass of the park watching some birds so I went over to have a chat and see what kind of birds they were looking at. Apparently, this wasn't going to be a bike ride but a lesson in Osprey. It was kind of cool though learning all about them and he even took some pictures for me with my camera through his cool lens.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Riding a bike aross the Mississippi River was pretty cool though. You'd never know that we were on the edge of a metro area since we were riding through trees and grassy fields and such. Kind of nice to feel out of town even though I knew it was lurking just beyond the trees.

Worst part??? I think I might have hurt one leg on the ride. The 12 miles between the parks was ok. I added about 15+ more miles riding from my house and tooling around on dirt paths that apparently I wasn't supposed to be mountain biking on. A day and a half later my one leg still hurts around my knee... weird since I've never had knee problems before. huh....