Denton Greenbelt

This past November (months ago now, I guess...) I went to visit my folks in Texas.

The last time I was in town, my Dad had been having back problems that he just couldn't kick. Since then, he talked to some doctors, had some surgery, and gotten some good recovery. According to Strava, he'd been back on the bike a bit recently, which was great to see, especially since the last time I'd seen him, he could ride, but then he'd have trouble getting around for a few days after.

When I arrived at my folks' house, my Dad looked great. He was not only super mobile, but he'd lost a bunch of weight and looked pretty fit.

The next day, we headed up to Denton to try and ride some bits of the greenbelt that we'd missed the last time.

Last time we drove both cars up, parked at the end, shuttled back to the start, and rode point-to-point. This time, we planned on doing a figure-eight-type thing so we only needed one car, which was a lot easier, but felt less epic. It was also a million degrees outside the last time and we both nearly died of thirst multiple times. This time it was pretty cool, and felt less epic for that reason too.

We planned on heading out on the road, finding part of the trail that we hadn't ridden last time, picking it up there, riding back to the car, then doing a lasso north from there. So, we left the lot, heading east on the road.

There were some interesting chicken houses off to the right, not far from the lot.

At least, I think that's what they were. It was a chicken farm, at least, so we figured that's what they must be.

We rode around, looking for the trail, for like an hour. We even passed several gravel cyclists, coming the other direction, so we figured we must be in the right place. Turned out no. They were apparently just as lost as we were. After ending up at a dead end in one direction (at the bottom of a long, steep hill, of course), and at a T with a road that was definitely well outside of where we wanted to be in the other direction, we ultimately decided that we must have missed the trail earlier. I even resorted to using the maps app on my phone to try to find it.

Yep, we'd missed it. It was like a mile back up the road that we were on.

Goodness.

So, we spun back and looked pretty hard for it. It turned out that we weren't blind, or unobservant. The trail was semi-difficult to find, and worse, fenced off. It wasn't like the fences on the East Texas Trail though, where you're supposed to open and close them. This looked permanent. Like, "don't go here" rather than "remember to close the gate."

When we'd first ridden out there, the parking lot on the south end was closed because the Trinity had flooded and choked it (and the trail) with debris. When we rode, it had all been cleared, but not yet formally reopened. The trail we were looking for had been the alternate entrance while it was closed, but now that the lot was back open, I guess the alternate entrance had been closed.

Dang.

Well, at least it counted as Adventure.

Somewhat discouraged, we headed back to the lot, and crossed the river. The discouragement dissipated pretty quickly as we headed north, though. The trail up there is fast and fun.

We'd ridden that section before though, and knew what to expect - you ride along the edge of various fields, periodically broken up by little belts of trees. It winds a bit, but you still head generally north. The river is off to the right somewhere, and you kind of get farther and farther away from it for a while. Eventually, it bends hard left though, and you end up crossing directly over it. If you keep going straight, you end up at some trailhead below the dam for Ray Roberts Lake. We'd gone that was last time. However, there is a paved trail to the left that we hadn't ridden before, so we went that way.

Turns out it just leads to another trailhead, over by the outlet.

There were various trails leading down to the river, both official-looking, and less-official-looking. All appeared to be fishing trails.

We rolled around the trailhead a bit...

...and I made use of the facilities.

From there, we had a couple of choices... We could head back over to the other lot and take the incredibly sandy trail from there up to Isle du Bois Park, or we could just climb up to the road and take it. Last time, the trail was kind-of fun, except where it super sucked, but it was slow going, we didn't have a ton of daylight left, and it was getting noticeably colder as the sun got lower.

We opted for the road, which, despite the climbing, was definitely the right decision.

The park was just up the road...

Oh! And I forgot about the best part!

Texas state parks, and various trailheads (including the one we were parked at) are free on the first Sunday after Veterans' Day. We didn't have to pay to park earlier, and we didn't have to pay to get into the park. We hadn't planned this, it just worked out, but it was great because I'd forgotten entirely about parking fees and admission fees, and hadn't brought any cash with me. I'd have been digging around in my ashtray trying to find $7 in change, and then trying to cram an overloaded envelope into the fee slot at the trailhead. No idea what we'd have done to get into the park.

Last time we were at that particular park, we'd ridden all of the singletrack - the incredibly rough, rocky, and twisty singletrack. It had been incredibly hot outside, we'd both run out of water well before getting off of the trail, and it had taken like half an hour of sitting on a picnic table and chugging to get right again.

As such, we had declined to ride the paved trail that also winds through the park.

Not this time!

It turned out that the paved trail was narrow, fast, and twisty. I used to call trails like that "road bike singletrack". It was, by far, the most fun paved trail I'd ever ridden.

Somewhere near the end, I had to stop to pee, and I got a couple of photos of my Dad and our bikes.

But, we didn't dally about. The sun was getting low, it was cooling off, and we were both feeling underdressed, though I think me more than my Dad. He was, at least wearing a long sleeve base layer. I just had my craft sleeveless layer on under my jersey.

It was kind of a climb back up out of the park, so that helped keep us warm, but it was up and down on the road, and the drop down to the lot off of the dam was a screaming descent. I remember it really vividly, actually. The sun was setting ahead of us, my Dad was riding up, off to the right, and we were tearing down the road, but the cold was biting harder and harder, the faster we went. It was one of those cases where "this is great!" and also "this is awful!" at the same time. In the moment, I was doing that Perpetual Retrospect thing, and it's such a good memory now. I've done so much of that kind of thing by myself, but it's so much better with somebody else. Later, you're just talking and it comes up... "Remember coming down off the dam? Goodness!"

We didn't go all the way down to the lot that we'd exited earlier, rather just crossed through the one that we'd been through on our previous visit.

The river was tranquil.

Heading back, we experienced the ultimate conflict... Do you ride faster to get back to the car more quickly, or do you ride slower so you freeze less? Choose! Neither is the right choice. If you ride faster, you get colder, but if you ride slower, you're out for longer and you still get colder! We chose to push it, and as stated earlier, it was both the right and wrong choice.

I remember thinking that each field was the last field, only for there to be another field.

It was undeniably beautiful out there though. The cedars and the tall grass, the dim light, the clouds and the last bit of light... We eventually put our lights on. We probably could have pushed into the darkness a bit longer, but not safely, at the speed we were trying to maintain.

I distinctly remember being very happy when I saw headlights on the road ahead of us. Even if there were 3 more fields, we were still pretty close.

When we got back to the car, I was a popsicle and my Dad wasn't much warmer. I got the truck going before running off to change clothes. It was decently warm in the truck when I got back, but my heater core needed to be back-flushed, so it wasn't as warm as I craved. I definitely made good use of the heated seats.

We grabbed some dinner at Luigi's Pizza, nearby in Aubrey. Their gimmic is this awesome lazy susan tray thing. The server actually came out spinning it.

The pizza was great. I'd definitely eat there again, and considering that there are still a few bits of trail out there that we haven't explored, I may just get the opportunity.