Donut Day Ride

When Ride Spot announced a challenge for National Donut Day, I immediately started planning a ride incorporating a favorite bakery a couple blocks from my house and my favorite park in town! I invited fellow Ride Spot Ambassador Beth Forster along for company, she agreed to join and stop at another local bakery on the way to meet me!

Magee's Bakery, Slinging delightful treats since 1956!

I rolled up to Magee's shortly after 10:00 and Beth was already there with a collection of treats from North Lime Coffee and Donuts. I put my mask on and went  into Magee's to order an additional half dozen donuts of varying styles. Once I got out of the bakery Beth kindly offered to carry the box of donuts in her Surly Disc Trucker's large front basket. We got everything packed and loaded we headed out towards Lake View Park. On the way passed through the Ashland Park neighborhood and past the Henry Clay Estate which is privately owned park with public access at the site of the early Kentucky Lawmaker's historic home called Ashland and the neighborhoods namesake.

 

Beth riding the paved trail into the park!

Once we got to the park we rode the paved trail into the wooded heart of the park and rolled around looking for a spot to set up our donut and coffee picnic. The first spot we stopped had people there already so we turned around and headed down one of the parks many dirt trails.

Exploring some of the parks singletrack on the way to finding a picnic spot.

We ended up finding a picnic spot fairly quickly next to a dirt jump someone had recently built on the trail and got to preparing our respective #CoffeeOutside setups (Pour over for me and french press for Beth ) before getting into our donut feast

Getting the coffee ready at our freshly found picnic location.

A selection of the Donuts From Magee's

The feast begins!

As Beth and I were drinking our coffee and munching on our donuts we heard some bikes coming down the trail and it turned out to be my friend Brian. Brian's a great local cyclist who runs a local art printing business that has designed flyers for many local bike events. Beth and he had not met before but both ride Surly Disc Truckers and immediately got to talking about pros and cons of different setups with them. After the chat Brian rolled on but it was a pleasant surprise to see him on the trails unplanned.

Brian, a great local cyclist and talented print artist.

Good Coffee and Conversation!

We had several more cups of coffee but limited our donut consumption to two as we felt our blood sugar spiking and wanted to save some for later. we continued to talking for several hours but ended up getting restless and decided to leave the bikes for a minute and explore the park on foot! The park is largely built around a series of gullies  that have some water running but not really enough to qualify as a creek or stream.  We walked down the side of a slight incline and explored the small water features. I was in sandals and even got to dip my feet into the cool water a bit.

Exploring on foot.

the tiny little waterway!

Farewell Lake View!

After exploring for a while and having a good portion of the day  fly by we decided to head out and finish up the ride we took a different route then we took to the park and got to roll down a long hill on Lakeshore Dr before heading down Richmond Rd. We split off once I hit my neighborhood and yelled goodbyes as we went our respective directions but it was a thoroughly fun ride and observation of National Donut Day