Reply to Riding Labor Day week

We are planning to ride from Valentine to Inman Labor Day week, Just wondering if anyone has ridden that stretch lately, and how the trail was. Areas to avoid (someone mentioned that the area around Johnstown was good to avoid and take the road as there was a lot of thorns in that area etc. So any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Hello Stephen,

Sorry no one answered your questions....I would like to know too. We will be riding in Sept, but sometime after your ride.

I hope you will write about your experiences on the Trail. From what I have heard about the thorns and ranchers..... kinda apprehensive.

Stephen & Marna We just rode Valentine to Norfolk Aug 7-21. We were a little apprehensive as we left Valentine as we were told the road was ok to Arabia and after that not so good. We rode all the way on the trail except for a short distance in front of the co-op at Ainsworth (local advised stickers bad). Also we did have to detour to highway between Clearwater and Neligh. Bridge has been out since 2010. The trip Johnstown to Ainsworth was our hardest section. Stickers were bad as you cross roads from one section of trail to next section. We carried bikes a time or two. We checked tires at each intersection and pulled out many stickers. Now that we are done, I can say, we had no flats, but did have to air up a front tire on one bike each day before starting. L Bow Saloon in Johnstown serves a great hamburger and folks are really nice there. About 3 miles out of Long Pine going east we ran into a patch of thistle. Covered the entire trail. We rode through it for a quarter of a mile or so and then it cleared up again. We rode a bit of The Katy Trail earlier in the summer and if you are thinking these trails are similar, I say no. The surface is not as hard pack most of the time, you will come across tracks and bumps not made by a bicycle (more so on the western end). Sometimes it is like a pature road. Weeds in the middle and a trail on each side. At times there were big holes in the road and look out for bridge 164 between Meadow Grove and Battle Creek. big washout. As we moved east the trail was progressively better. We rode recumbents with 2 1/2 inch tires. We didn't break any speed records. Rode in rain a couple days around Inman and that was slow going. We saw only a couple folks on the western end. About Neligh we saw maybe a half dozen riders besides ourselves. It was challenging at times, but we made the trip and glad we did it. We met nice folks along the way. I hope that they can make improvements and finish out the trail to Chadron. I would like to ride that. Hope this helps. I will try to add more to the various sections. I just have not had time. I would have liked to have had more current information than we had when we started.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS WRITE UP ABOUT THE AREA!

I knew, had heard, that the Cowboy was not as nice as Katy or Mickelson. We just wanted to know what to expect and what to prepare for before the ride. We are not new to this type of riding, we even tell people, on our website, what they might want to carry on the Mickelson....and it is sure not the Katy Trail either! www.doesmybuttlookbigithesaddle.com but with all the tourist information written..... that paints such a pretty picture.....the book for the Cowboy.....no.
AGAIN! THANK YOU!

Thanks, much for the comments and we knew a little about it figured the ride was similar to what my friends did in the Dirty Kanza in the Spring(I plan to do one of those rides next spring), rougher than the Katy, but passable. We have several tubes, a repair kit or two, and my friend just put Schwalbe tires on her bike (they have the puncture resistant layer in them), and I put Slime liners in my Clement XPLOR USH tires. Hopefully we'll be ok on that. We are only planning on 40 or so miles a day. I had read about Johnstown and riding the highway around the agri center there. We may end up riding the highway more if tires become an issue :) But we are looking forward to our ride.

Thanks for the comments and discussion, and hope your ride goes well too Marna!

Steve