Katy Trail ride

[SLash]

That's the Mo Research Park extension trailhead, right before the St. Charles trailhead pic--my "home" trailhead! We regularly ride the area from St. Charles to Defiance (ice cream stop!) Glad you enjoyed my home state of Missouri. We're still trying to do the west end from Jeff City. Maybe this year. I'll do it end to end at least once :-)

I always wonder how far people have ridden when we see them on our end. We passed the Bike & Build team last year. The trail is also mentioned in Kurmaskie's book, "Momentum."

Lucky you!! We liked that leg of the trail. I need to post a picture on the blog of that huge tree nearer to St. Charles - know the one I mean?

We definitely enjoyed Missouri, it is a beautiful state. The Trail is an unbelievable resource - the longest state park I've ever seen. Glad we are so close to it too.

We saw a couple of stages of the Tour of Missouri in 2008 and have wanted to bike there ever since. Glad we did, now that we know how great it is we'll be back!

[Deborajen]

What an awesome trip - I'm so jealous! I've been trying to convince my husband that we should ride the Katy, but he's convinced that since it's not an all blacktop trail, it wouldn't be any good. We rode a small stretch of the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota several years back and never got a chance to coast on the unpaved surface - and he's completely set on riding road bikes with the skinny road tires. So how was the ride? (Besides the hilly section!)

[SLash]

What an awesome trip - I'm so jealous! I've been trying to convince my husband that we should ride the Katy, but he's convinced that since it's not an all blacktop trail, it wouldn't be any good. We rode a small stretch of the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota several years back and never got a chance to coast on the unpaved surface - and he's completely set on riding road bikes with the skinny road tires. So how was the ride? (Besides the hilly section!)

I've always been a skinny road tire girl myself, but got the Jamis Aurora elite so we could do these types of rides. It's different than riding on the road - no coasting as you pointed out - but no cars too. For me at this stage in my life no cars trumps about everything else.

Besides, it's beautiful, quiet and relaxing. On the road you can never relax because you always have to be aware of what is going on around you but on a trail with no traffic, in the middle of nothing, yet everything, complete escape happens.

Except for Mother's Day, I bet we didn't see 30 people on the entire trail the whole time we rode. 227 miles. I love that, but then I like solitude.

The surface was in great shape. Hard packed, only a few spots that the back wheel would dig in a bit and slide but never to the point that I fell. And they have had an unusual amount of rain. A tree fell one morning and later that morning they were already clearing it.

We met a guy on the trail that has ridden quite a few of the rails to trails and he said the Katy was his favorite.

I highly recommend you give it a try, especially since you're so close to it. If you can't convince your husband to go take a friend that rides. You won't regret it!

Susan

[indysteel]

What fun! Thanks for posting that. I'd love to so something like that someday. I'll have to share you blog with my DH.

[indysteel]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

[Tri Girl]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.

Here are the lessons I've learned from your trip:
1. ride East to West since you had a headwind most of the way (although riding the opposite way will insure there will be a headwind the other direction, too).
2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

[uforgot]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.


2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

You can go to the Katy website and you will see that it is actually slightly downhill west to east from Pilot Grove. It is deceiving, I know! I think I'm going slightly uphill no matter which way I go. Here is an elevation map.

[SLash]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.

Here are the lessons I've learned from your trip:
1. ride East to West since you had a headwind most of the way (although riding the opposite way will insure there will be a headwind the other direction, too).
2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

Thanks Tri Girl! Yes you can definitely camp. The guy we met going cross country camped, by no means do you have to do b & b's.

I think we will still probably ride west to east because an east headwind is rare. Surely it wouldn't do it again, especially in the fall... milder winds in fall, right?! Plus we would park our car in Sedalia, ride east and take either Amtrak back to Sedalia or a shuttle.

We saw the elevation map on the KT website but we're going to check our elevation on one of the websites where we can upload our Garmin data and see for ourselves the elevation changes. Goofy I guess but it isn't so much that it felt uphill it looked uphill.

However, the trail definitely didn't have significant uphill or downhill and you're right that riding on a packed trail requires more pedaling effort than the road so it is more work. More fun too though!

3. Lots of that!

[uforgot]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

Oh, yeah, I want to know that too. Did you use one of those shuttles?

[SLash]

Oh, yeah, I want to know that too. Did you use one of those shuttles?

We used Katy Bike Rentals to get back from St. Charles to Clinton. There are quite a few places that provide shuttle service. Here's the website for shuttle info:

http://www.bikekatytrail.com/planari...?chkShuttle=on

[SLash]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

We used a shuttle service but you can also use Amtrak. They don't go to Clinton where our car was, we used Katy Bike rentals to get us back to Clinton.

http://www.bikekatytrail.com/planari...?chkShuttle=on