As you can see the Trinity River is still roaring over Gateway Falls, making passage impossible across the river to continue on to beautiful downtown Fort Worth, or the Fort Worth Stockyards.
It has been a few years since I have pedaled from Gateway to the Stockyards, or downtown. That makes for a long bike ride.
After seeing my way west blocked by the still flooding Trinity, I turned around and headed to the Gateway Park mountain bike trail.
Above you are looking at the entry to the FWMBA (Fort Worth Mountain Bike Association) Gateway Park mountain bike trail. The sign says "SIDEWALK CLOSED", which it is, but it does not say the mountain bike trail, to the left, is also closed.
I did not attempt to roll my wheels on the mountain bike trail. Instead I chose to find out why the paved trail is closed.
Well, below is one reason for the closed paved trail.
Not only has a tree bent over to block the way, the wooden bridge across the ravine has been removed.
I later figured out why the wooden bridge is gone. The paved trails and wooden bridges seem to be in the midst of the upgrade promised by signage near the mountain bike trail entry where the Fort Worth Trinity River Central City Panther Island Vision Boondoggle informs us that trail upgrades, including new bridges, would soon be underway.
At the time I first read that I said I'd believe it when I see it. I guess that now makes me a believer.
Continuing on I discovered large sections of the paved trail have been removed, including sections which have long been an eyesore, that being fenced off sections of trail left dangling over the edge of the Trinity by the ravages of Hurricane Hermine, years ago. At the location you see above the paved trail previously continued til it hit a cyclone fence with signage informing that the trail was closed for maintenance. The trail continued past the cyclone fence, broken off, in places, dangling, waiting to fall into the river in other places.
The dangling trail and cyclone fence are gone. It appears new trail has been bulldozed, away from the river. All the wooden bridges have been removed. You can still cross those locations via dirt path, sort of like mountain biking.
Well, this will be a good thing, having the Gateway Park trails fixed. Gateway Park has the potential to be an extremely nice park. But, I don't quite understand how America's Biggest Boondoggle came to be in the trail fixing business.
I hope The Boondoggle is able to build these new bridges in Gateway Park faster than the four years they plan to take to build their three little bridges from the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.
Continuing, after Gateway Park I ventured a short distance west, to the aforementioned Town Talk where I got myself some big green peppers, black beans, garbanzos, Swiss Cheese, rye crackers, carrots, yogurt, two giant pumpkin pies, jalapeno kielbasa and other stuff I'm not remembering right now.
And now it is time for lunch....
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