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.
December 29th, 2012 came along with some beautiful weather in the Mazama area....broken blue skys and a nice 21 degrees.....with my little brother and his wife up visiting through the holiday season we ventured out to play in the snow.....We originally headed up to snowshoe the Cedar Creek trail....but Hwy 20 wasn't plowed past the first sign at the bottom.....and when we came across the Early Winters bridge we could see trucks and cars parked on both sides of the road....somewhere between 25-40 rigs.....lots of snowmobile trailers.....we decided that we needed to locate another snowshoeing spot with a little less traffic since my brother wanted to do a little snowboarding if possible......so we headed to Yellow Jacket Sno-Park....Large parking area with just a few vehicles parked....we strapped on our gear and headed up the trail....nice easy hike up a groomed snowmobile track....lots of places to step off the trail and explore...we pretty much stuck to the trail on the way up.....


























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