The trail was paved, level, and mostly shaded.
Most of the roads we had to cross were not that busy either. At this intersection, we crossed via a tunnel that went under the road.
Beautiful day for a bike ride! Wouldn't you agree?
We started noticing a lot of paintings of movies, TV shows, events, people and just about anything else on the wooden fencing along the trail.
Here are the characters from the TV comedy Seinfeld with a lot of their quotes.
This painting was one of my favorite movies when I was a child, The Wizard of Oz...
...and one of our daughters' favorite movies when they were little, The Princess Bride:
This was a really good painting of Clint Eastwood from the movie Outlaw Josey Wales:
There was even a painting of George Jones, a country music legend who passed away just last year.
Take a look at this cool three-dimensional painting about the vanishing Florida panther. From the right, it looked like this:
From the center, looking straight on:
And from the left.
And there was this painting as a memorial to 9-11.
Actually, Bonnie and I missed probably the first 2/3 of the paintings because we were busy talking and discussing important stuff. :) Besides, we knew we would see them on the ride back!
After about 7.5 miles, we stopped and had lunch at Panera Bread. We sat and enjoyed our lunch, the beautiful weather, and our wonderful friends!
After lunch, we decided to head back rather than ride any further out since it was already middle of the afternoon. Plus, we would be riding against the wind most of the way back making the ride a little tougher going.
As we approached the last set of paintings, we happened to meet the artist, Jeff Sonksen.
He said he has been painting these for about 2 years now and it originally started as kind of a prank. Wouldn't it be nice if all pranks were this beautiful? We complimented him on his work and he told us it was very easy. (Sure it is.) He said he paints the boards using paint he gets from the dump and by painting from an image projected on to the boards via a projector. Kind of like paint by numbers but without the numbers. He said it was so easy that his 14 year old daughter painted the below picture of Malala Yousafzai, the young Muslim girl who survived being shot for speaking out and promoting education for girls in her country.
Amazing! He said he has to keep the weeds and brush cut back also so he can work on the paintings. Not only is he adding to the beauty of the trail with his artwork, he's doing some of the lawn work too! To see more of his artwork go to: Paint the Trail.
After we got back to Ken & Bonnie's CRV, the guys loaded the bikes and we headed home making a stop for some ice cream at Toppers. I had a triple chocolate dessert consisting of chocolate ice cream, oreos, chocolate chips, and hot fudge. In case you don't know by now, I LOVE CHOCOLATE. Chuck and Ken were very disciplined and didn't get any ice cream. They just sampled a couple of bites of the girls' ice cream. :)
Since it was still daylight when we arrived back at the campground, we played a couple of games of shuffleboard with both the men and the women each winning one game. Then, we got back together later that evening at our place for some more games of SkipBo and Pinochle with the women winning 2 of those 3 games. I think the tide is turning. :)
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