Into the haze of desolate cold lands of Richland. Coursing through the relief of the single track, with sparsely laced water elements to misdirect your route. Thickets sprung over the top of what seems like walls between you and your destination. The routes are interesting in this stretch of these woods.

In this episode I’ve made it to Richland and off my brother and I went to explore the surrounding single track, food options, and other sundry of things.

The route overall that we ended up taking was about half tarmac (i.e. paved surface) and a whole lot of gravel, dirt, rutted dirt, horse shoe trodden dirt, and a dose of sand thrown in that made it impossible to traverse.

Surfaces

Tarmac is of course the easiest surface to roll on. No need to even discuss that.

Gravel, in general, when mixed well for trails is a fairly easy surface material to roll on with the added friction. It is a lot of fun when mixed right with a bit of rock dust and dirt and whatever else to create an almost tarmac like surface. This route had a significant dose of both, very loose gravel and well packed gravel.

Dirt can have vast differentiation. Dirt can end up being mud and the issue of sinking comes into play or dirt can be as solid as tarmac too! On this route, the dirt was rarely just merely dirt, but often rutted from motorcycles of some sort or off road vehicles, and then on other parts it was stamped into horse shoes. I’d never thought about it much, but rutted with horse shoes can be some very difficult dirt to get through. When dried and hard, it creates an incessant bumpiness that can just rattle the bones while if muddy it creates an almost suction like pull as you attempt to roll through each shoe imprint.

Sand can be described in one word. Suck. Sand just puts an unquestionable halt to rolling through. If it isn’t mixed with something to solidify it a bit it’s impossible to ride through. In the image above I’ve hit some sand and just opted to hike through it and carry the bike. It was the easier choice.

As we rolled along through the first 2/5ths of the ride we worked up some hunger. We checked the ole’ “Google Maps” and fumbled our way over to Baby J’s BBQ & Burgers. A good stop indeed – even had a chance to eat and just shoot the breeze while we did. Check that out in the video at 8:31.

Mystified? Not particularly, but fed we were now ready for the other miles.

On the way back, we’d looped around and came back along the river, which gave us the treat of a glorious sunset while we road along riverside tarmac trail – unfettered by any traffic. A most excellent ride wrapped up this way would have been great.

But there was one more layer of icing on this cake, we went rolling through a golf course for that final leg back home! It was a somewhat hilarious thing, since we had no intent of rolling through a golf course. However once in the midst of the thing, we realized we were indeed in the middle of a golf course.

Great trip, great train ride, always great company being able to hang out with my brother, great food, and just a whole giant good ole’ time!

• 0:21 – Quick intro to the ride.
• 1:30 – Initial map trace and ride start.
• 8:31 – Baby J’s BBQ & Burgers along with the BBQ Conversations and some ride recap.
• 13:34 – Final stretch of the ride.