Clive Greenbelt Trail

Lynnea walking on the "trail"

To start off this blog we must say that we rode on this trail on the most perfect day! Sunny, low 70's, and our spirits were high.  We just randomly found this one in our book that we bought.  It is mostly shaded, cooler, travels alongside of Walnut Creek, buggy, forested, high traffic of people; bikers especially, and filled with nature.  In total we saw 3 does and 2 stags, and a beaver! The trail is very scenic and for most of it you forget that you are riding in an urban area.  It is composed of multiple bridges that connect to various neighborhoods, bends, natural and preserved prairie (cool), a few playgrounds along the path, patches or urban areas and it links up with Campbell Recreation Area which has a shelter, picnic areas, restrooms, parking and concessions.  Overall this trail is scenic, paved, good length for an out-and-back ride, and provides recreation of all kinds for everyone.  The really are only 2 negatives about it: high traffic of people and the trail heads are somewhat hidden from the main streets so they can be difficult to find.
There are a few different "trail heads" to choose from so we just chose the one closest to our apartment.  We started our journey at the West Trail Head.  And of course, because it is us, we started going in the direction where the trail ended about a mile down.  The tricky part about all of this is after our trail "stopped" the path kept going but there wasn't a sign or anything to tell us what trail we were currently on.  So we kept going and going through Clive, then through Windsor Heights, then Des Moines and finally we were in West Des Moines at the start of the Raccoon River Trail.  The trail to get to this point contained a detour route because of the construction on Grand Ave bridge.  Due to this there were a few rather steep hills added to our path that made things very challenging.  In the end though they were fun and worth it.  When we stopped in WDSM to find our barrings we ran into the QT nearby for some Gatorade and then headed back on the same path that lead us there.
Eventually we snaked our way back onto the Clive Greenbelt Trail and to our trail head.  We were feeling good still after riding nearly 11 miles so we kept going (left from the trail head instead of right this time).  This portion of the trail was very curvy  and the path had narrowed some making it difficult to go fast due to the large number of bikers and joggers that were also on the trail. We went a few miles down the path and then turned around.  At this point we ran into a large group of people that we named as the "biggest loser wannabes" because they all had matching shirts, they were all overweight and their shirt said "the gear challenge" or something like that.  They were super annoying only because there were about 12 of them in a somewhat spread out line.  Once we passed all of them we were almost back and we'd be safe and sound. THEN A DEER POKED OUT OF THE WOODS AND NEARLY KILLED US!!!! But for real it almost made me crash into Kathryn's bike and at the same time a small family was right behind me and almost crashed into me! It happened so fast that there really wasn't a chance for anyone to give the others any warning of stopping so abruptly.  Everyone was fine though so we continued and shortly after finished our ride.  In total we biked for 13.78 miles.  It wasn't super long but so far it our longest!  It takes time to get in biking shape but we'll work our way up to the big boys!

Trail Link: http://www.bandhtrails.com/dsm/trails/clivegreenbelt/