On this visit to Sara and family, we needed to take turns watching the grand-kids so most of our running and biking were done by ourselves.  We have visited Sara’s house many times in the 5 years they have lived there.  On many of those visits we took our bikes but were not quite sure where to go.  Little by little we discovered some routes.  This time I checked the Garmin Connect website  and found some routes posted by others that were on the other side of the freeway.  It seemed you had to go on the freeway for one exit to get to Mounts Road, so I ventured out to find the course.

The route took me down Nisqually road to Reservation road.  It was then a short distance on Highway 510 to the Yelm highway.  From there I took Spurgeon Creek road, a most delightful road, with very little traffic.

The road ended at Rainer Road, where I took a left turn.

I had created a course on my Garmin Edge 500 and was following along the track.  As I was biking along Rainer road, it showed a left turn, but there was no road there.  Yikes!  I continued on to the next road, called Military road and turned there.   My Garmin 500 has no maps with streets, just a track and a message I was off course.   I proceed along, and could see on the Garmin the track I had plotted was  off to the side.  I kept going, turning left at each opportunity.  I finally made it to highway 507 and saw if I went left I would get to Yelm.  Once I reached Yelm, I stopped to check the Google map on my iPhone and saw that 507 intersected with Highway 510, so I took a left on 510 back to Reservation road.  Highway 510 was rather busy and went past an Indian Reservation (meaning casino) so I did not like that stretch.

Sara later mentioned that during her running, she found a way over to Mounts Road (without going on the freeway).  I took off the next day for a long run and found the way.  You could not drive a car but running or bike was fine because you had to go through a narrow gate.  I borrowed Sara’s Garmin Forerunner 405 watch (with GPS) so I was able to get a map of where I went on the 9 mile run.

On our last full day there, Anne and I were able to bike together so we decided to do the similar cycling route as I had.  Rather than going on the freeway, we took the route I had run up Hoffman Hill road, to Mounts road.  We decided to just go 22.5 miles and turn around and backtrack, to avoid highway 510.  That way we are able to bike on Spurgeon Creek road both ways.

We ended up with 45 miles and a better route.  Click below to enlarge.

On one of my solo runs earlier in the week, I ran out to Solo Point.  I wanted to take Anne there on the bike, but we ran out of time so we drove out.  We were just in time to see a great sunset.  A fitting end to a fun visit to Washington.

Categories: Cycling, Running
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