Click here for a link to my blog on the Clive to Grey’s Lake trail.

One beautiful day with no rain in the forecast, I brought my bike up to Des Moines so I could explore some of the trails near downtown after work.  I started at Grey’s Lake, and after studying the map that is posted on a huge sign there, I decided to head off towards downtown.  While I loved all the signs (like the one pictured above) that were on the bike trail to inform me of the areas I might want to visit, there still needs to be better signage when the trail ends at a city intersection and there is no bike trail to be found!  I also would have liked to know what my bike trail was called that I was riding on!

Do I cross the river to connect to another dedicated bike trail or cross the street and go straight to find one?  There were absolutely no signs connecting these trails so it became frustrating pretty quickly.  The picture above is one of those places where I had no idea whether to cross on the bridge or go straight onto a city street. While I paused to try to look for a trail along the river, I had to take the photo above when I saw the Des Moines Capitol Building in the distance.  I eventually found a bike trail along the river only to have it dead end into some construction, and I had to turn around and go back.,

I did enjoy the Principal Park area which is where the ICubs play, and you can see it off in the distance here as I headed back to the Grey’s Lake area.

Principal Park is just a beautiful area as you can see above and below.

There were numerous bridges I crossed.  I loved this old, wooden-planked bridge where one could just take a seat and relax if one wanted.  I’ll end this with a picture of the view from this bridge.