Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Partial Expanded Lake Washington Loop (2020-02-22)

Started with a good warmup over Capitol, First, and Beacon Hills, followed by an easy ride over the new Eastrail. Was hoping to loop the whole lake, but it started to rain, so I decided to head home over the SR-520 Trail.

Map
Geotagged Album

I'd been fighting with my camera's SD cards that date back to 2013 or so, and this ride finally got me to ditch them and order new ones. Thankfully, I had one younger SD card on hand to get me through the ride.

More after the break…

Since I was planning for this ride to be a shorter one, I started much later than I used to, at 08:00. I started by heading through my usual route to downtown, then left it to go up to Capitol Hill, which showed me a special treat: new protected bike lanes heading to and up the old route up Pike!

I was hoping to take a photo at my first stop, but my camera said "CARD ERROR" for every SD card until I got to the newest one, so I had to order new ones. While I was frustrated, at least I one to use in the meantime.

At Jefferson Park: Where I discovered that most of my SD cards had gone bad.

I had no idea how big Jefferson Park was. It took me a lot longer than expected to find a restroom before finally heading off.

Unlike past rides, I stuck to Beacon Avenue for quite some time, to the point I was wondering where my turn off was going to be. Once I did eventually hit it, I was met with rolling hills of varying steepness, with the steepest forcing me to my feet. Eventually, I made my way to familiar territory over Seward Park, which led me to Rainier Avenue and my route to Renton.

Once in Renton, I started on my usual route along the perimeter of the municipal airport, only to realize that my route this time was a bit further closer to downtown. Unfortunately, this route choice ended up being less-than-ideal, and led to my usual route anyway. Unfortunately, that involved a short section of underpass trail that was closed-off due to silt buildup from all of the floods over this past Winter with record rain.

Cedar River
Boat Statue
View this post on Instagram

Pretty abstract #boat . #cycling #bicycle #seabikes

A post shared by Neil E. Hodges (@takenji1989) on

While I ate a snack, I watched as locals paid no mind to the closure and used the underpass anyway. The said that the city's cleared out most of it, and that it was dry, so I decided to go for it anyway!

Trail Underpass: The repeated flooding this Winter left a ton of silt under here, most of which was already gone. Since it was pretty much dry now, I just went under the chain to go to the other side of the road.
View this post on Instagram

Looks pretty dry to me! #seabikes #cycling

A post shared by Neil E. Hodges (@takenji1989) on

I stuck to the Lake Washington Loop while passing through the Renton Landing until I remembered how horrible the whole mess around Southport Drive is, then sought out the underpass that I'd used a few times in the past. Why isn't this underpass signed?

Houser Way N Bicycle Underpass: So much easier than dealing with Logan/Northport!
Houser Way N Bicycle Underpass: So much easier than dealing with Logan/Northport!

I stuck to Lake Washington Boulevard for a while, before my route took me to a completed section of the Eastrail. Exciting to see some progress!

Eastrail: I had no idea they had this much done!
Eastrail: I had no idea they had this much done!

One curiosity was this little trestle that hadn't yet been converted into a pedestrian bridge.

May Creek Trestle: The county's still in the process of replacing it with a trail bridge.
May Creek Trestle: The county's still in the process of replacing it with a trail bridge.

The Eastrail ended at where Lake Washington Boulevard was the access road for Newcastle Beach Park, with a diagonal crosswalk transitioning the Lake Washington Loop route to the old Lake Washington Trail.

Eastrail Connected to old Lake Washington Trail: I had no idea they had this much done!
Eastrail Connected to old Lake Washington Trail: I had no idea they had this much done!
Eastrail: I had no idea they had this much done!

And the Eastrail right of way continuing with coarser gravel.

Future Eastrail

While taking the Lake Washington Trail toward Bellevue, I noticed that they'd a couple of the old railroad trestles in anticipation of opening more of the Eastrail.

Future Eastrail Bridge: I'm surprised they bothered with a new bridge here!
Future Eastrail Bridge

Man, I'll sure be glad when this section and its means of getting cyclists back into traffic on 118th Avenue SE are bypassed!

Lake Washington Boulevard SE: So glad to not have to deal with this little bit of infrastructure when the trail in done.

As I continued toward Bellevue, I noticed that the I-90 Trail's crossing of 118th Avenue SE had been completely redone, but still with terrible sight lines on the western side of the road.

New I-90 Trail Crossing: Didn't expect to find this!

I stuck to the Lake Washington Loop route through downtown Bellevue, noting some minor improvements here and there on both the short trail segments and mixed-traffic segments, as well as the new East Link viaduct.

East Link Light Rail Bridge

My intention for this ride was to take the Cross Kirkland Corridor through Kirkland, so I used NE 12th Street to make my way over to the other side of I-405 and to the trail. Near the trail entrance, I noticed vast amounts of light rail construction for the new base, as well as a little bridge over the tracks.

East Link Light Rail Construction
East Link Light Rail Construction
Ramp Over Light Rail Tracks: Hopefully the trail connects properly at some point.

It was at this point that the scattered showers worsened enough to convince me to simply head home, as I wasn't about to spend hours in the cold rain. I felt like I'd had a good enough day thus far and didn't want to ruin it. Thus, I left the trail and simply headed on 120th Avenue NE and Northup Way to get to the SR-520 Trail. I was hoping to see some work I'd heard about to connect the SR-520 Trail with the Cross Kirkland Corridor, but nothing jumped out to me north of Northup Way.

Cross Kirkland Corridor: Shame I didn't get to ride it this time.

While I headed along Northup Way, some roadies were also heading the same way. When I asked, they said that they were going to ride the Burke–Gilman Trail around the north end of the lake. They all took diffent means to get onto the trail itself, while I missed the turn and had to wait in the suicide lane for traffic to clear so I could run and lift my bike onto the sidewalk that starts the trail.

Over Yarrow Creek

After climbing the rolling grades to the west end of the bridge, I realized that I could copy a photo at a vista I was previously unaware of. This did result in a chainring tattoo all the way up on my thigh, though, which my partner commented on when she saw it.

Over Evergreen Point Floating Bridge
Evergreen Point Floating Bridge

I headed west on the bridge back to Seattle, noting that some of the roadies were heading back east again. Once on the Burke–Gilman Trail myself, I headed to FreeRange Cycles to chat for a few minutes before heading home.

It was certainly great being out on a longer ride again, but I wish that the weather would've let me fully finish it.

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)