Things are getting back to normal here after Thanksgiving — as normal as life around here can be as the Christmas season ramps up.  I’m watching my calendar fill up for the next several weeks.  It brings up that tense feeling as I see different responsibilities and my training collide!

I’m still enjoying the thoughts of what I’ll do with the new trail I’ve started building back in the swamp.  I went out in the rain on Sunday and took a few pictures.  I’m including them here.

The entry into the trail

There is a cool walking bridge my dad built sometime ago that leads into the trail area.  It has grape vines growing over it.  During the spring it has new leaves and looks like a portal to a different world.

The mounds of dirt that should make the trail interesting

In the above picture you should be able to see three mounds of dirt that have been there since the ditch the right was first dug.  They are well packed and allow you to ride a short serpentine pattern up and over them.  Not sure that moss will last very long once the knobbys get there.

Here you can see the type of woods containing the trail

Don’t let the above scene fool you!  While there are large portions of the wooded area that are open like this, there are also large sections with lots of undergrowth and briers.  To the left of this shot is an area that the trail turns toward.  I had to have a machete to cut through it.

The drainage ditch

The drainage ditch is what makes the fun moguls, but it also is something I have to get across to get to the larger section of the woods.  My plan is to build a narrow ladder bridge over it.  Then the trail will follow the ditch — you can see where I plan to go on the other side heading to the left top of the picture.

Sure hope all the fun won’t be in the building of it!  I’m sure once I get a bike out on it, I’ll have to make some adjustments.  I also hope to put more challenges into the larger loop.  This is going to take me a while, but hopefully years from now my kids will enjoy mountain biking at grandma’s!

Yesterday while here visiting my parents, I was looking around for something to do.  I walked out in a wooded area where I used to play as a kid.  A few minutes later, I was starting the construction of a mountain bike trail.

The geography around here is dominated by swamps.  Because of this there are many drainage ditches running along the various fields surrounding my parents’ property.  Along two sides of their yard there are wooded areas with these ditches running along the edges.

The neat thing about these ditches is that when they were dug many years ago the dirt was piled up beside the cuts.  Later the trees began to cover them.  So here in the woods there are nice little moguls — some up to four feet high.

I began clearing some of the undergrowth and removing some small trees allowing me to open a path along the moguls.  After taking this path along the ditch for about 30 yeards, I turned away from the ditch into the woods.

Things slowed down a bit then because of the myriad of thorny vines.  There were large green ones, old dry black ones, small vines with thousands of small thorns, and some with thorns about an inch to an inch and a half long.  What was fun suddenly lost its enjoyment!

Still, I got another 40 yards down and was starting plans for completing a loop.  Once I got that loop done, the plan was to build a ladder bridge over the ditch into another wooded area about 100 yards by 40 yards.  This could be a pretty awesome MTB trail!

I was very excited about getting back out there this morning.  My nephews said they would help me and I figured we could finish the first loop and build the bridge leaving me something to ride when I return in December as well as opening the new area for further trail building.

I woke up and it was raining!  Did I mention that there are a lot of swamps around here?  There also is no hint of a draught here!  The ground is saturated with water.  It is just way too wet to get out there.  So, I guess I’ll just have to keep planning in my mind until I get here for Christmas.