I wanted to try another cycling route today--I think a little variety to my routine will do me good. So, I looked at the King County bike map (which includes Seattle) and decided on Lake Sammamish, which you is the eastern-most lake on the North Region side of the picture. From the map, it looked like the whole lake was surrounded by a road with a bike lane, which is pretty much necessary for a longer ride in a big metropolitan area.

I found a parking space on the west side of the
lake. I started heading south because the northbound side doesn't have a bike lane on this side of the lake. There was traffic, but it wasn't that heavy. Still, a few pickup trucks passed by that really fouled the air. It actually happens pretty often on most of my rides and it's the pick-up truck that's usually the culprit (not so much the SUV). So guess what? I'm starting to hate pick-up trucks. What's amusing is that very rarely do you see any cargo on the truck bed!

Anyway, as you head south on the west side, you can get a good view of the entire lake and some of the low-elevation Cascasde mountains. But you can't really see the ones further away to the west with snow on them. The traffic picked up on the south side. As I started riding on the east side of the lake, which also had lots of cars going by, it started raining ice! No kidding. I wasn't expecting it, but it is always a few degrees colder only a few miles to the east of Seattle. Fortunately it didn't rain too long and the ice was the size of regular rain drops so I don't think it qualifies as hail (?). Actually it wasn't bothering me much because it wasn't that hard and I had gloves on. If it had continued raining, my only concern would have been the condition of the road.

On the north side there's Marymoor Park. It has some soccer and baseball fields as well as some trails. Some of the park close to the lake has marshes, which I only remembered after I saw a heron calmly standing on a field of grass right next to the road! It wasn't a major road--it was part of the park, but I was still amazed because there were cars driving through. I turned around and stopped about 30 feet from it to take a picture with my cell phone, but it flew away as I was about to get the phone out of the pack under the bike seat.

Back on the west side of the lake heading south, the traffic was lighter again. It was a decent ride, but it's one of my favorites because of the car traffic.

Total: 22.5mi Bike Ride; 144 lb.