3 1/2 Mile Bike Ride Around Walnut Creek Lake

Although not a long trail, the Walnut Creek Lake Trail (near Omaha Nebraska) gave us a workout on this bike ride.

Walnut Creek Lake Trail Near Omaha

Bike Ride or Rain?

It seems as if weather or obligations have conflicted too frequently with our desires to go for more bike rides. Wakening to clouds, rain, and fog yesterday was not what we hoped for in weather. However, the Weather Channel did somewhat promise a few dry hours.

Although we have learned to mistrust weather forecasts, a later glance outdoors showed things had dried up a bit, so we loaded up our bikes on the trunk bike rack and headed for Walnut Creek Lake.

Parking at the main parking lot, we decided to take a clockwise circle of the lake on our bikes, the opposite direction we rode much earlier this year on our other bikes.

As you can see from the above picture, the trail is wide and smooth, and not nearly flat enough to satisfy us, though the fact that it circles so closely around this scenic lake helps to make up for that.

Walnut Creek Lake Rest Stop

Resting After an Uphill Ride

As usual, I stopped more frequently than Vicky liked. It’s not that I need to take a break every little bit, its the fact that I often see something I want to stop and take a picture of. However, the above picture was definitely a rest stop.

This was taken after completing a steep (to us, anyhow) uphill stretch of the trail, between the boat launch area and the dam. After finishing a can of pop each, we squashed them as small as possible and placed them in our “snack bag”. That’s the yellow bag you see on the back of my Trek.

Walnut Creek Lake and its trail requires park users to pack out their trash, and we noticed it was kept quite clean.

Bellevue Loop Over There

Wildlife at Walnut Creek Lake

Reaching the end of the dam closest to the boat launch area, we stopped for a few more pictures. As you can see, the grass is starting to turn brown, and fall is on its way to Nebraska.

We were disappointed by the lack of visible wildlife on our ride. Previous trips to this lake usually revealed a large number of geese, and other waterfowl. Not this time though, not a goose in sight, yet we did see four ducks flying overhead, and Vicky pointed out to me a large white bird of some sort off on the far lake shore

Walnut Creek Lake End of Bide Ride

Downhill is Nice

This photo, taken after our ride, shows a nice pleasant downhill slope that we went down before getting back to our car. A little bit of the dam may be seen on the left side of this picture, with a larger hill behind it.

Yet, when circling completely around the lake, for every pleasant downhill stretch there has to be an uphill stretch.

Knowing that this was a short ride, we had planned on circling Walnut Creek Lake at least twice, but once around the lake and its hills turned out to be enough for us.

Hey we can do a ten mile ride, really! Not this time, though. Somehow I feel our next ride will be on a much flatter trail. Younger, and or, more athletically inclined individuals that have ridden this trail may scratch their heads and wonder at my comments about steep hills.

The tripmeter shows we did three and a half miles on this bike ride, which includes a bit of back tracking on the trail just for fun. As we were driving back home, a few large rain drops began splattering across the car’s windshield. We timed our ride just right!

Length of this bike ride: 3.5 Miles

Total miles biked together in 2008: 122.78 Miles

Date of this ride: September 7, 2008

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