Exploring

It's been really nice for several days and so I, naturally, went for a bike ride.

Usually it's not too common to see wild turkeys around here (not that it never happens its just that it doesn't happen too often) - so it was a bit unusual when I saw a bunch of them hanging out in a hay field.  It didn't take me long to realize that it's turkey mating season.  Tommy boy was strutting and the ladies were, inexplicably, sticking around and not veering into the woods reeling in mirth.  Reminds me a bit of high school. 

Later in the ride:

There are good days for rides and some not so good days (some rides are type II, character building rides but even then they're not really bad days for riding) and this was, by any count, a good one.  Most of the roads I was riding were gravel and a few were paved but the really good ones are dirt and dead end in a lake. 

I wanna know what the fate was of the person that left these car tracks.

As the ride progressed it became one those rides where you're having so much fun being out that you don't really want to go home.  To delay the end of the ride I explored several side "roads" that I hadn't been on before.

On the map I had with me it showed this road going on through towards where I wanted to go.  It ended rather abruptly and emphatically in a pile of brush beyond which there were trees, mud, and rocks but no road.

 So I turned around and headed back the way I came.  I had noticed a small lake on the way in but didn't stop.  On the way out I did stop and hike around a bit. 

 Back on the main/known route I noticed this official-looking forest road (so what if it was just a two track...it even had it's own name/number) and decided to check it out.  I again looked on my map and it showed this road dead ending before too long.  But it had showed the other roads going through when it actually dead ended - so maybe this would be the opposite. If it went through it would be a fun shortcut from the road to the rail-trail.

Forest road 419B dead ends on a grove of spindly birch in case anyone is wondering. 

 Back on the rail trail I noticed a two-track going off to the south kinda toward where 419B had dead ended.  I rode down it.

It ended up curving the wrong way.  Or at least if felt like the wrong way, it was tough to be sure.  Most of the time I was riding today I was in the CNNF but I was beginning to get back towards civilization and was a little concerned that what I was riding on was private land.  I turned around.