Marshalltown’s paved bike trail is a long one for a smaller town trail (9 miles one way). I usually start in the almost middle of it by the Marshalltown Y and head out of town, but if you go the other direction you go around a nice, marsh area with trails to walk through or benches to sit down and enjoy all the birds. It eventually ends at the north end of Riverside park if you would like to start there.

However, last week my husband and I went the other way which I believe is west. 🙂 The bike trail goes by the football fields where my sons played football as 4th graders and always makes me smile remembering those cold, early days out watching them. Then it follows a stream and eventually ends at the nature center.  In the next picture I was trying to show the height of some of the flowers.

I tried to take a video on the cell phone to capture the sounds of the prairie, but it didn’t turn out at all so a picture will have to suffice.

On my drive to Des Moines each day, I have been watching a new bike path being built next to Highway 30 that connects to the trail that goes along Highway 330 or the “diagonal” as the locals call it.  I was hoping and wondering if it went all the way to the nature center, and so I was ecstatic to see that it does!  Pretty soon you will be able to leave Marshalltown and bike all the way to Melbourne. (read about it here)  I can’t believe how well-used the trails are.  Just a word of warning that the Marshalltown trail is crowded but friendly.  For now the above picture is the end of the trail and where we turned around to head home.