Category Archives: Iowa City

We tried again last weekend to cobble out a decent bike ride via trail in Iowa City and did only slightly better this time than last time – a few years ago. Part of it has to do with the lingering devastation from the 2008 flood – which wiped out some of the trail along the Iowa River – not to mention several major arts buildings including Hancher Auditorium. (It was sobering to pass by those hollow wrecked buildings.)

Part of it is that Iowa City doesn’t have the trail system of a place like Des Moines to begin with – and no casino revenues like in DM to construct and pave trails. We did begin at the southern end of the Iowa River Corridor trail south of town and it got off to a pleasant enough start – a tree-lined winding trail along the river but then it got diffuse and hard to follow around campus and when we picked it up again at the city park north of Hancher, the trail petered out into  haphazardly marked residential streets and  then it dumped us out with no further explanation – just as happened during our previous ride – on a commercial strip under construction (again still-recovering from the 2008 flood). We ended up taking a sharp right and winding through a very odd housing development – what’s called the Peninsula  Neighborhood – that looked completely out of place with mock-old urban architecture in a rural setting. It felt like a movie set. Granted the brick rowhouses and single-family new-old home cottages and bungalows are  attractive – but looklike they belongin Baltimore or maybe Washington D.C.

We did manage to make the ride into a bit of a loop, riding past the housing development and a golf course to the north end of the city park where we rode through downtown and campus to catch the trail back to our car.