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This morning, to visit my mom on Mother’s Day, I hopped on my bike and headed out the Macomb Orchard Trail to Richmond. Danielle later met me there with the car and bike rack and after visiting for a while we headed back to my place.
This ride was the first time that I rode the MOT the whole way through Armada and didn’t use 33 Mile Road as a bypass around the gravel part of the trail. Previously I’d been unwilling to ride on the loose, poorly chosen gravel lining the path but this year it seems to have packed down into two tracks of something mostly ridable. Unfortunately horse hoof prints (essentially 1″ deep pock marks) were left all over much of this hard packed area turning the surface into washboard, thus the choice was to ride on rough but hard gravel or sink into soft gravel. Had I been on a bike with a suspension fork and a more forgiving frame it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. Today’s weather was also outstanding, save for a ~12 MPH wind out of the northeast.
The photo above was taken in Armada along a loading platform at what appears to be an old train depot. Upon rolling into Armada I was most struck by how similar it looks to Dryden along the Polly Ann Trail, specifically the buildings along the old rail route. In both places the rail trail spills out into a larger gravel area, along which lies a long white building with a loading dock on it, a grain silo, and some access roads.