Hi Laing, Hey, that's my backyard. :)
I'm just a bit north of you, and I ride this trail pretty frequently. There are a few other entrances (for bikes and hikers) other than the refuge headquarters - north of it, there's a gate that connects you to a dirt road in the southern reaches of Wellington. If you head south, there's the Loxahatchee boat ramp (and more, I think the levee trails will take you all the way down into Miami/Homestead). You can also loop all the way around the refuge, for a total of about 75 miles. The alligators are mostly dormant right now with the cooler weather, but I think you'll start seeing them more soon. There are deer out here, too, usually in the morning foraging in pairs. I realize deer aren't noteworthy in the rest of the country, but I had never seen a single one down here at all until I started riding on these type of trails, and now I see them about once a month on my rides. Sometimes when they see me, they run off in the direction the trail, and I try to keep up. Our scenery definitely doesn't have the visual impact of, say, the Rockies, but one thing to appreciate about the Everglades is that it's a totally unique ecosystem, and so much of it has been destroyed. Riding here, just a few minutes from modern developed suburbia, you can still get a little glimpse into what Florida used to be. Plus, like you mentioned, it's much lower-stress than the road riding we have. There are other trails like this you can visit in the area. I've found the heat maps from Ride with GPS and Strava (https://ridewithgps.com/heatmap and https://ridewithgps.com/heatmap, respectively) really helpful to see what's accessible to bikes, and what connects to what, based on where other people are riding. - Andrew On Monday, February 21, 2022 at 10:22:59 AM UTC-5 lconley wrote: > I haven't been riding a whole lot since I moved to south Florida as the > roads are kind of crowded with people that don't pay a lot of attention to > what they are doing. Most of my riding had been on the El Rio Trail > commuting to work. So I did some research. I live in Delray Beach, which is > the "thinnest" part of the populated part of south Florida. The beach is > four miles due east and the Everglades starts seven miles due west. Three > miles north of that is the Arthur R Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife > Refuge. It turns out that there is a path on top of the dike at the edge of > the Everglades. I have a Lifetime Senior Pass for National Parks, etc., so > yesterday I decided to to put my Mystery Bike in the back of the Element to > go see what I could see. > > [image: EGs.jpg] > > I guess this qualifies as gravel. No cars other than one park truck, just > a few pedestrians, occasional kitted-out bikers on a carbon fiber gravel > bikes, a few people on Walmart mountain bikes, the occasional small boat in > the canal, and an airplane doing acrobatics over head. Zero elevation > change. Not a lot of change in the view, but very quiet when the airplane > wasn't around - low stress riding. Didn't see any alligators, but they are > out there. I will be back for longer rides (with a water bottle). This > trail goes north and south for many miles - I think it is 40+ miles in > total. > The single speed Mystery bike on 29x2 Big Bens is about perfect for this. > I do need to transfer some Ergon grips onto it from another bike. The > Rustines grips just don't cut it. > > [image: EG2s.jpg] > > Laing > Delray Beach FL > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/aeb06b8a-fd7e-4916-9522-6ec693bb3bfbn%40googlegroups.com.
