BIKING ALONG THE NEW RIVER TRAIL

We choose another pretty spring day to take our first bike ride in Virginia.  We began our journey at the trail head where we had hiked to previously along the New River Trail.  You may recall this trail is along a former railroad track that was once part of the Roanoke Southern Railroad back in the 1930's.

This first bike ride was two weeks later than the hike we took.  You can see the trees are now almost fully in bloom.  Paul is standing on a long trestle we crossed admiring the view of Chestnut Creek below.

The date of the construction of this part of the railroad was marked on another trestle along our route.

In building the track bed along the creek, sometimes part of the hillside had to be carved out.  In the photo below, this hillside was supported by rocks on the left and railroad timbers on the right.

Slow meandering Chestnut Creek increased significantly in speed at several rapids along our route.  It is still only about 40 feet across at most locations.

Here is another set of rapids, maybe we could call this a small waterfall.

The flowers were more colorful in the bright sunlight.  Here are some of our favorite flowers from our ride.  First spiderwort.

some honesty ...

a wild geranium ...

a lighter shade of honesty ...

and some fire pink, also called scarlet catchfly.

We enjoyed watching swallowtail butterflies, often flying two or three together, playing with each other as we rode past them.  A picture?  The butterflies we have seen never seem to land even for a moment, but they were fun to watch.

At the end of our ride, we came across this sculpture.  Later we asked a park ranger about the sculpture since we were baffled.  Can you tell what it is?  [answer below the photo]

The ranger told us it was a project done by some eagle scouts several years ago.  The sculpture is supposed to be a train.

A week later we explored a different portion of this trail by bike.  We started in Fries (pronounced freeze) and traveled about 5 1/2 miles up the trail.  We were now riding along the New River, which is about 400 feet across in most areas.  These photos of the New River are quite a contrast to narrow Chestnut Creek shown above.  The views reminded us a bit of views of Maine coastal islands, with the rocks protruding from the water, steep inclines and trees lining the water.

 

We did spot this snapping turtle, we think getting ready to lay her eggs.  She had dug a large hole in the grass with her hind feet and was just sitting in it as we rode by.

One of the new wildflowers we spotted were everywhere along the bike path. but we could not identify them even after several searches on the internet.  As you can see, they were beautiful white clusters.

A close-up view

We did find the name for white milkweed, not nearly so spectacular.

We enjoyed our bike rides along this wide and level pathway which was mostly covered with cinders.  The views were serene as we rode along in partial shade and partial sunlight, so it didn't get too hot, even though the temperature was around 75 by the time we finished our ride each day.  We anticipate going back again and again to explore other parts of this fabulous trail.