A little frustrated at not being able to ride my bike in Coarsegold, I did a little research and found a bike trail in Fresno, CA, about 28 miles from us. It's called the Fresno Sugar Pine Trail also known as the Clovis Old Town Trail. A little bit of a drive for us to get there, but there are a lot of nice things about Fresno---great malls (River Park is a BEAUTIFUL outdoor mall with beautiful courts and fountains), easy access in getting around town, and lots of other activities to attract the outdoor enthusiast. Biking does it for me, so off we went to find the bike trail. But first, stop off and get some artisan bread at Panera Bread. This little guy was waiting for some bread crumbs. Because Sparky is a softie when it comes to little birds, he got some!
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| one of the park benches |
Now, on to the trail! We found the trail at the Blackstone Road exit off 41 in Fresno just past the River Park Mall on Nees Ave. at the underpass bridge. We parked in the mall parking lot by a credit union and rode our bikes around the corner to pick up the trail. It was a beautiful trail, wide and very shady for the first part, many gorgeous flowering bushes and trees along the way. This trail skirts residential and commercial areas but has been extensively landscaped all along the way, at least where we were. I read that over 4400 trees have been planted along this trail. There are great benches along the way, and plenty of places to come off the trail and get a bite to eat or some ice cream in the area malls and shopping areas. You are not smack in the middle of these shopping areas, you are off to one side. We rode about nine miles today....it was a beautiful day to go and we even found a little strawberry stand further out with the most luscious sweet berries. I packed 'em back in my little bike pouch and back home we came...LOVE that fresh California fruit!
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| A nice shady resting area on the bike trail |
The fruit trees are EVERYWHERE and all kinds of fruit are growing here. We must be in the fruit belt as the highway landscapes are all fruit trees and grapevines. No matter where we go in this particular part of California, the fruit trees are on the left and right of us..Highway 41, highway 140, and highway 99 are some of the fruit highways. In my humble opinion, I think anyone is very lucky to have orange, lemon or grapefruit trees growing right in their backyards. Of course you see a lot of that in Arizona and California. I suppose you'd get tired of making fresh juice with all these fruit trees around, but tomorrow morning, I'm making Eldo a strawberry smoothie with California strawberries! Yum! See you tomorrow on the road again......we are leaving Coarsegold heading towards highway 101......
Been enjoying reading your blog. We haven't made it to that part of CA yet. Understand how you feel about cycling. That's the one thing we don't get to do as much as we'd like since we've been fulltiming.
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