Flint Hills Nature Trail – Ottawa

Yesterday we rode the Flint Hills Nature Trail a rail-to-trail here in our home state of Kansas. The trail is 117 miles long but not all of these miles are developed yet. Currently there are 3 segments that are developed and we chose the one between Ottawa and Osawatomie which is about 16 or 18 miles. We parked at a city park in Ottawa and rode about a mile to catch the trail head on East 7th street. The trail stops just short of Osawatomie. We’d planned to take the highway the rest of the way in to town but they were in the process of resurfacing and it was a mess of sticky tar, construction trucks and steam rollers so we just turned around and headed back.
The trail is very nice. A pretty good crushed limestone surface, many turns and mostly tree lined. There were a few places you had to be careful of the big long cracks from the lack of moisture and heat. The city of Rantoul is approximately midway between the other 2 towns but has no facilities to speak of. There is a cafe that I believe is only open on weekends. They do have this little oasis of vending machines on the main street near the trail. Along the trail we spotted many dear, a raccoon and what were either turkeys or pheasant (they were too far away for to say for sure). Total we rode 38 miles.
After the ride we had a nice late lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Ottawa.