Getting out and enjoying a beautiful evening ride. We ventured up to Echo Ridge trails for a evening ride, first time experiencing the trails on a bike. I've hiked and snowshoed, but never pedaled this area. I ride for the pure enjoyment and the free feeling I receive than for exercise. There is such a joy, complete sense of freedom I feel when I ride, it is something that I almost feel addicted to and have a really hard time choosing between hiking or biking. Fat biking in the winter started this craving that now has bled over into spring rides, a few summer evening rides and beautiful fall rides. Most of the time you could call my bike outings a hike-a-bike, since I spend about the same amount of time off my bike taking pictures of nature as I do riding. The Echo Ridge trails were a pleasure to ride, a little bit of everything, wide open spaces and huge views, nice flowing trails where you can pick up speed, places you can ride side by side or single tracks, a few climbs mixed in. We mixed our trail choices up with some easy, and a little bit of the difficult so we could enjoy the views on our way down. The sun was setting beautifully on our way back to the trail head so we took the time to simply enjoy it, look for wildflowers and just absorb the beauty around us. We will return here before the summer heat hits, to enjoy nature and the simple pleasure of pedaling.
Echo Basin was our last early spring hike in the Eastern Washington area. We were planning to hike the Frenchman Coulee side that heads toward the waterfall but changed our mind due to the amount of cars parked at the trail head. So down the road just a little ways we went to hike the Echo Basin trail. Even with a early start the sun was way too bright, not hot, just bright. We hiked up the jeep trail that starts on the left hand side of the road as your facing the Columbia River. Didn't seem like a real exciting trail till we reached the sand dunes, which put us closer to the rock walls. Up and over the sand dunes and on up a goat trail to get above the walls. Without really knowing were we were going we just winged it. Lots of faint trails and trails in the sand, hard to know which was the true trail. The rock walls are huge and fascinating, the columns are even more interesting up close. We hiked until we had a view looking down into Echo Basin, and a nice look at th
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