Sunday Ride - Makeout Point Minnesota

This Sunday ride ends at an illustrious local landmark. It travels along the Mississippi river and south st paul.

It's about 50 miles.


Some useful milestones for this ride:

901 Sibley Memorial Hwy
5 Harriet Island Blvd
240 Point Douglas Rd S
County Rd 18, 55119

Makeout Point
12085 Grey Cloud Trail S, Cottage Grove, MN 55016

587 Verderosa Ave
565 Marie Ave W, Mendota Heights

UPDATE - notes after riding it

You can't get to Makeout Point by road! It's posted as a private road, no trespassing. I think from satellite map it may now be on private property. The public road ends by Camp Galilee.

Some routes are hard to find! This map uses quite a few park trails, sometimes worn and battered, sometimes hard to find. Google Bike Maps are great, but they don't distinguish trail rotes from road routes.

Our ride was 2,600 feet of climbing. Some of that was due to some navigation errors that turned short flat routes into long routes with big hills. Some of it is because on the way back from near Makeout Point we took MN 75 (Grey Cloud Island Drive) and it's hilly. Mostly though it was because the route I plotted Simon's Ravine Trailhead across West St Paul is really hilly.

There aren't a lot places to stop for food or fluids. Plan accordingly.

Sunday ride: reverse northern loop and Minneapolis open streets event

This ride is a variant of an earlier ride, but it's run backwards so we end up at the July 21 Minneapolis Open Streets event on Lake and Minnehaha:

 

The ride starts by my garage and there are two segments:

Part 1 - Starts at (my garage) - 44°55'55.2"N 93°10’14.0”W
16 miles 2h allowing for urban paths, getting lost on occasion

Part 2: Starts at 45°03'16.0"N 93°18’42.4"W
22 miles, 2.5h
(but at E Lake St & Elliot Ave we follow open street path more or less depending on congestion)

 

Sunday Ride - road to Carver Lake Park, Mountain Biking, return

This Sunday ride combines a road ride with mountain biking and possibly including trials of some Pivot mountain bikes.

On June 30 Angry Catfish and Pivot Bikes are providing loaner bikes from 10am to 4pm at Carver Lake Park. So there's the option of riding a road bike to Caver and then borrowing a mountain bike. Carver is sometimes used as an introductory trail for someone new to mountain biking (trail riding really, we don't have mountains here).

I'll ride my mountain bike so I won't use up a trial bike, but if one is free I'll try it. Since I'm on my mountain bike I have an excuse for being slow.

The ride starts in St Paul's Mac Groveland neighborhood and looks something like this:

There's about 30 miles of road riding plus Carver trail biking. I think we can get lunch in South St Paul (Stockman's Truck stop) but bring some snack food and water.

There is a possible variation: if everyone is on mountain bike we could take a shorter route by doing the Battle Creek overlook trail down to the bottom of the creek, and then pickup the road and trail along highway 61.

On the way back we'll climb Ramsey Hill (much nicer than climbing Jefferson) or follow Tim around Cathedral to Summit.

Sunday Ride - Depot Coffee House and Lake Minnetonka variations (two)

Minnetonka route for Sun Aug 11

50 mile loop. Waypoints:

• Minnehaha Falls
• 44.912592, -93.338041 (gets us on minnehaha trail)

Takes about 1h10min to get to Depot

• Depot Coffee House - Home of The Freight Room, 9451 Excelsior Blvd, Hopkins, MN 55343
• 21760 Fairview St, Excelsior, MN 55331(eat in Excelsior)

• 3405 Crystal Bay Rd, Wayzata, MN 55391 (gets us across the lake)
• 44.992628, -93.419314 (Luce Line Trail basically)
• 44.954798,-93.214009 (Midtown Greenway street parking)

Depending on one's home or car it's easy to get back to Minnehaha Falls.

Similar route, but to Victoria

Depot Coffee House to Victoria route
Depot to Victoria, lunch in Victoria, back by Southern route.

Bike Ride - Scandia North

This ride starts in Scandia, it's about 60 miles:

It's supposed to be a loop, but I ran into Google's landmark limit so you have to imagine the last few miles back to Scandia.

https://goo.gl/maps/qmXbv5zJqKe9d6e9A

I'm probably going to tweak this one a bit more.

Sunday Ride - modified version of "Jerry's Ride"

This is a shorter ride of 30 miles to the northeast of MSP:

Google short version: https://goo.gl/maps/AGyTNk5rNNLcZCnP6

It's based on Jerry's Ride from Richard Arey's "Twin Cities Bicycling" 2003. The book isn't in print now and I don't believe there's a later edition.

Sunday Ride - Minneapolis South to North and Northeast

May 26 Ride is a variant of the May 12 ride (Below). It’s about 38 miles in total and it starts and ends at the Midtown Greenway eastern terminus (can park there or ride to there).

Midtown Greenway (start) to Victory Flagpole - 13 miles
https://goo.gl/maps/Y3MVRiwDxdWih8Pn7

Victory Flagpole North MPLS & Shingle Creek Loop - 14 miles
https://goo.gl/maps/PBQzSdfbL4LGTdzx6

Tour of Northeast MPLS - 11 miles (to midtown greenway)
https://goo.gl/maps/NxD9NoFGxFHZs6NQ6

This ride is built on the ride below and incorporates parts of them with some new parts in NE MPLS. It’s mostly on trails but there are some (we hope) bike friendly streets as well.

— Original ride

This is a Friends ride Sunday post, but it turned out Sunday May 12 is Mother's Day. My spouse is working and my mother has transcended, so I'll be doing it solo. I'm stopping at Angry Catfish for coffee and to return a defective Otto Lock (are there any other kind?) then North to Coon Rapids. On the way back I'll stop in Northeast MPLS for a late lunch at the Anchor, then head home. Most of this route is on bike trails.

Update 5/12/2019: The ride from Angry Catfish across south Minneapolis then up to Victory Park is really extraordinary. I spent so much time sightseeing and having coffee and pastry at Angry Catfish that I ran out of time to go to Coon Rapids. Instead I had to cut across to Northtown ...

I really enjoyed Shingle Creek and Webber Park. Visiting 13 Ave NE meant I finally understood the state of NE Minneapolis. Sheridan Veterans memorial.... Betty Danger's Country Club ... Northtown, Columbia Park ...

 

Next Time I'd like to make a loop of the trails north of where I crossed the river. So same way I went, but then something like this:

 

That would be a fun loop. Incidentally, if I had some idle millions lying about I'd invest in real estate out there. For better or worse it's going to go upscale.