Moose Loopish

 A friend told me the other day that he averaged 60 miles or so per day over 13 days in France on his bike this summer.  I've been doing much shorter rides.  But he got me thinking I should do the Moose Loop - a loop along the Anchorage bike trails that remembers, physically, the outline of a moose's head. Most of it is on trails but there is still a gap between the end of Campbell Creek trail and the Kincaid trail.  It's about 32 miles altogether if you do the northern loop.  

I had a book to drop off at the library and one to pick up and then I headed south to the Campbell Creek trail.  It was such a beautiful day that I decided today was the day to go for it.  It's been a while since I've done it.  When I got to Raspberry and Jewel Lake, I stopped and got a sandwich and sat out in the sun to eat it.  I'd only had a dried salmon strip before I left home.  

Then on to Kincaid.  

I posted about the planet walk in July when the grand kids were here.  We walked from the sun to Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars downtown.  But the rest of the planets were too far to walk.  Uranus is on the bike trail and I passed it today.  At each location, the bodies are proportional.  The sun is big enough for the grandkids to fit comfortably inside if it had a door.  Mercury was about pea size.  Uranus was about basketball sized.

I saved this one higher resolution, so it should be bigger if you click on it

As I was getting closer to home, there was still blue sky showing here and there, but this heavy dark cloud was hanging over me.  But the rain was barely noticeable.

So I made it home and the odometer said 44.17 kilometers.  Most of it on Moose Loop trails.  That's by far the longest ride I've had this summer and while I'm a little more tired, it doesn't feel bad.  I've been selling myself short.  That's about 25 miles.  It gets my summer total now to 956 k.  

I wasn't thinking about mentioning moose in the title.  But I did see a bull with a big rack on the road into Kincaid.  It was across the street walking along a chain link fence.  It would have been a great picture without the fence.  I stopped to take a picture and a car pulled up right between me and the moose.  They high-fived when they got their picture.  I moved further back on the trail, but the fence turned and dipped and the picture I got was not only just the top half of the moose, but his head was turned in a strange way.  You'll just have to trust me.  It's not a good enough picture to post.