Trail Dishes Out Chilly Taste Of Fall

It hit me like a blast from the north that fall is getting away and I’d yet to savor the color from a bicycle seat along the Katy Trail.

The leafy show along this premier biking path across Missouri didn’t disappoint when I saddled up for a ride on the Katy Trail last Thursday.

The Katy meanders about 238 miles through the heart of Missouri, from Clinton on the west to the eastern end at Machens, near St. Louis.

So much for an autumn that was supposed to be a no-show in Arkansas and Missouri. The Katy was crazy with color, as were the trees in our own neck of the woods during a fall that was beyond expectations.

I drove north on Thursday morning in shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I crossed Lake of the Ozarks, a north wind howled. Sleet and cold rain pelted the windshield.

I knew it was going to chill down, but I didn’t plan on winter in October.

I’d tossed a light jacket in my bag as an afterthought.

Good thing.

I zipped it up tight at the trailhead acrossthe Missouri River from Jefferson City, the state’s capitol.

The keychain thermometer on my trusty Schwinn read 45 degrees.

A gale ripped colored leaves from the trees at the deserted trailhead. I put my head down and pedaled north on the Katy Trail. That way I’d have a tail wind on the return and wouldn’t be so doggone cold.

At times the Katy meandered through a tunnel of cottonwoods, maples and oaks that broke the wind. A little farther and it’s plowed fi elds of rich, black dirt on both sides with nothing to stop the blow.

I wasn’t a mile into the ride when the heavens parted. Buckets of rain poured forth and this wasn’t the latest hurricane.

Gusts from the northmeant only the front of me got soaked while the back half stayed fairly dry. After a 15-minute deluge the shower turned to mist and the sky lightened.

This gray, moist afternoon seemed to heighten the color in the hardwoods. I slammed on the brakes in front of a hickory tree that showed the brightest yellow I’d ever seen in leaves.

A red fox crossed the trail in front of me. Wedges of geese honked high in the sky, riding south on the cold front.

It’s all a long, narrow state park, this beautiful Katy Trail. Katy Trail State Park is built on the bed of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad so it’s mostly flat with a surface of fi nely-crushed limestone.

Each mile of the Katy is nice, but the primo stretch is the 35-mile section between Rocheport, Mo., and Jeff erson City. Much of this route hugs the wide Missouri River.

You’re sandwiched between the big river on the west side of the Katy and tall bluffs and forest on the east.

Katy Trail visitors can opt for a half-hour stroll, a weeklong bike ride across Missouri or anything in between.

Bridges that once carriedsmoke-puft ng locomotives now support bikers and hikers where the trail crosses creeks. At one crossing, yellow, crimson and golden leaves on the water were like a painting to be admired and always remembered.

I turned the Schwinn around and pedaled south, pushed along by the nice tailwind.

Back at the North Jefferson trailhead, Istopped at a monument that dedicated the completion of the Katy Trail.

The east section and west section were joined here in September 1996. I imagined a big celebration with smiling trail enthusiasts, speeches and a brass band, maybe a golden spike.

A drinking fountain was handy for rinsing some Katy Trail gravel off theSchwinn’s black frame. I stashed the bike in the car, climbed in and turned the heater up to high.

I’ll come back again when the Katy sounds its siren song in the spring, when the forests and fi elds wake from their winter sleep.

FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.

FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER AT TWITTER.COM/NWAFLIP.