now that we're home my allergies are driving me crazy - all that pollen floating around and being out in it for 3.5 hours this afternoon.
we drove down to tukwila where we pick up the start of the green river trail and rode down to pick up the interurban trail to auburn, eat, and return.
at least that was the plan. we did see a couple huge hawks, as well as some eagles both in teh car both directions and from the bike. but there was something else we saw today on the trail. and there were a lot of them.
like over a million! - ok, definitely in the upper thousands anyway.
yup, that's right SANDBAGS! on *both* sides of the green river. they start at the 405 bridge and continue south of auburn. there were a few signs of 'trail closed' but nothing that said why. just before we actually got on the trail where i took these pics we ran into some bikers who had come north.
we asked them if they knew how far south these went, and they said you could ride carefully a bit, then you have to get off and go through an office park (big deal, we had to do that to get to this point) and then you end up on a road. ok, we're game. let's give it a go.
as it turns out we got the next bridge where we can cross, which we know we want at some point. we've gotten off the bike to cross the bridge and again a couple bikes come north so we asked them, too. she was surprised we didn't know anything about them. turns out there's a dam on teh green river about 20 or so miles upstream, and last fall they noticed some small (?) leaks. prudent minds thinking ahead said to the county 'we should put up sandbags JIC the dam breaks if we have heavy rains this winter.' and that's just what they did. tukwila, kent, auburn, and 1 other got together and filled oodles of bags and lined the river, which means took up the bike path. i guess it's entirely possible these could be here all season until the low point of hte water when they might be able to repair/do whatever with the dam.
anyway, we squeeze through a small opening in the bags and cross the bridge, meet a guy on the other side who says it might be easier to ride on the side we just came from, but it is passable on 'this' side for a bit. so why not, we kept going.
just before the break for the golf course the sandbags actually cut across the trail and we had to stop. it was either that, crash into the sandbag wall or fall over the levee into the green river. with not too many choices that were actually viable, matt hoisted the bike up on top of the bags and climbed over. once he had the bike off the wall i climbed up and over myself. (wish i had thought to get a pic of that!) it wasn't too bad the wall was only about 4ft tall and 3ft wide.
so it was city streets into kent and then we headed east to pick up the interurban trail a little sooner than we had planned. turns out it was only about 1/2 mile away. maybe a mile. really it wasn't too far by that time.
so it was the IUT the rest of the way, unimpeded, to the diner in auburn where we loaded up on carbs.
it was an easy choice to decide and stay on the IUT all the way back to just north of 405. then we picked up the green river trail again and made it back to the car.
it was a great ride.
