Frisco Greenway Trail ride

We took our first family trail ride together Saturday. We all had a lot of fun. This trail is an old railroad track that has been converted for walking/running/biking. It's the smaller of the two "Rails to Trails" projects in Jasper County at about 3.5 miles. (The other one, the Ruby Jack trail is about 16 miles long). I believe it was named for a mineral that was found while zinc mining in the area around the turn of the 20th century.

From the Joplin Trails Coalition website:

This is the first time I've been on the trail (any trail for that matter) and was absolutely impressed by how well maintained this is. The coalition has done a great job. There are park benches in several places along the route and the grass is kept mowed back on either side of the trail. I didn't get a picture of the benches, but here is a shot of the trail looking south toward Zora St.:

We started out heading north from the St. Louis St. trail head. We hadn't even left the parking area and my son's handlebars had fallen down to his knees. The neck bolt wasn't tight enough. It was at this point that I learned a valuable lesson: Always check your gear twice before leaving home, because my toolbox was still at home in the garage. I had no way to tighten it. Luckily it was tight enough that I was able to push it back up a little farther than the original spot and it stayed. I had him pull on it because I didn't want him to have an accident, and it stayed in place. We weren't going that far so we ventured out. No other problems the rest of the way.

It was pretty warm, 84 degrees by our vehicle thermometer. Luckily there was a breeze that kept blowing, so between that and the shade we found for our rest stops we stayed pretty cool. We only passed a couple of hikers along the way, but didn't see any other bikes. On the way back to the car we saw more people walking and some jogging/running on the last 1/4 mile so we practically had the trail to ourselves.

When I do buy a road bike, I don't think I'll get rid of the Raleigh. A road bike wouldn't do well on this trail (I'm guessing). It's smooth most of the way, but there were a couple of areas where the bike slid and bogged down in gravel and I think I might have had a problem if I were on a bike with a skinnier tire. Please understand that I'm not complaining, they have done an excellent job.