Some government people made a new access road west of the Hwy 77 bridge, which is quite alluring. But after a few hundred meters, it returns to some easy-going singletrack.

After snaking through the woods along the riverbank, we had some opportunities to test our balance.

Here's my bike:

The trail conditions are great, mostly.

This dilapidated raft was our passage across 9-Mile Creek:

Getting on this damned thing with a couple of geriatric hecklers standing by was high-comedy.
Some big trees along the river:

After a very brief pavement crossing of the parking lot at Lyndale, the trail is basically a gravel road. Then it narrows back to singletrack. Approaching the official endpoint of the trail, at Bloomington Ferry bridge, is, in my opinion, the prettiest part of the trail along the river:

My bike on the Bloomington Ferry bridge:

and a close-up of my "Explorer" tire:

This is where things got interesting. I said to my companion: "Huh, I wonder what's on the other side of the bridge." I asked a guy who was walking, and he described an old 2-track road that "goes along the river for a long way." A few minutes later, we encountered an old guy, who I figured would be in-the-know. He said: "I don't know anything about it, but it's worth a try!" That was all the encouragement we needed, and in a couple minutes, we were riding along the river on the 2-track, thinking we were geniuses for finding this alternate return route to complete the loop.
That warm and fuzzy genius feeling quickly subsided when we first had to push our bikes through the long grass and over/around numerous logs. Then we carried the bikes over a ravine, only to find another ravine, which was flowing deep and fast, with no good crossing points:

We opted not to cross, but instead to ride/push our bikes along this lovely trout stream.

It took some doing to hike our bikes through these weeds, which were great for concealing tripping hazards:

After the hike-a-bike in the weeds, we were rewarded with a nice smooth railroad to ride on. After my dental-work rattled out of my skull, we started pushing the bikes along the tracks.

It was a suboptimal situation, but what the fuck.
The railroad eventually led us to a frontage road along the freeway, which led us to a much-needed fast-food joint in a hellhole town (IMO) called Savage. My companion came up with an impromptu route along the perimeter of the Cliff Road landfill, which was nice. Shortly thereafter, we were on Black Dog Road, where I relived my brief (1-event) bike racing career (no near-vomiting this time).
Then back to the familiar trail:

Soon we were back to the point of beginning, for a 42-mile loop that included roads, singletrack, balance-beam bridges, a raft, gravel roads, more singletrack, hiking, railroad tracks, a landfill, etc, etc. We weren't tired at all, and wanted to repeat the loop in reverse, but opted to go home to make our wives happy instead.







