Two Days on the Issaquah Preston Trail

We have had an action packed two days - filled with me overestimating my capacity to hike and bike.  Yesterday we decided we would walk.  We headed up the Issaquah-Preston trail.  We ended up walking 6 miles which was more than my soft little feet were happy about.  We need to start toughening those babies up before going north in September.
A creek along the trail.

 

More of the trail.

 

We saw these two this morning when we returned on our mountain bikes.

 

We lived here for decades.  In all of that time we were unaware of the Issaquah-Preston trail, and the Preston-Snoqualmie trail.  The I-P trail is dirt and pavement, it goes in to Preston at I90 exit 22, where it hooks up with the P-S trail.  The P-S trail is paved with the exception of the switchbacks.   Both trails are rails to trails conversions.
There used to be a trestle over what is now the Preston-Fall City road.  The trestle is long gone, and this is what was put in place to get bikes up the hill.  Switchbacks!  The turns get tighter the farther up the hill you go.  We've driven by this hundreds of times, going out to Fall City to ride, and I have always wondered why it was there, now I know.

 

The Preston Snoqualmie trail heads off into the hinterlands on the old rail right of way.  Much of it is in the trees.  We did see this rather imposing gate right off the trail.  What, we wondered was behind that facade?

 

This!  It's a giant house with a giant courtyard plunked out there in the middle of the trees.  We always wonder about people's real estate choices.  It would drive me crazy to be surrounded by that many trees.  However, each to their own.

 

Finally, this is the scenic viewpoint of Snoqualmie Falls where the trail dead ends.  Can you see the falls?  We couldn't either.

 

It was a good ride.  If you're in the Issaquah area, it's a really fun trail.  I think it would best be done on a hybrid with slightly wide tires.  There's too much dirt for a road bike, but from the RV park it's 24 miles round trip, which is a little bit much for paved trail riding on a mountain bike.   If you drive out to exit 22, and pick up the trail there, it's all paved.  Or you can start at the end of the dirt section, I'm just not sure where you would park.
Are you watching the Louis Vuitton cup?  If you get NBCSports it's worth watching.  The boats are just scary fast.  NBC collaborated with Stan Honey and they have done a terrific job with the graphics, showing where the boats are relative to the course boundaries, what the current is doing and who is in dirty air.  It's pretty cool.  Click on this link and check it out.