The Centennial Trail out of Woodland Park, Colorado

On Sunday the 27th. we loaded up the trikes in the van and headed west up Hwy. 24 to Woodland Park, CO. to ride the trail along highway 67 to Deckers. We found it has a name, it's the Centennial Trail and it has a official trailhead and start point, just north of the local Movie Theaters. LOL, we didn't know that so we parked the van at the Visitor Area on the main road, the advantage is that the VA has "RESTROOMS"!!  When your 60+ that's a good thing, we unloaded and prepped the trikes and headed across the main road heading north, then west and luckly we found the trailhead. The trail while it's in the town of Woodland Park is smooth and nice, a total of "8 miles long" and goes to the Manitou Lake State Picnic Area, (be advised they require a FEE for entry, only $3.00 for bikes/trikes) to use the facilities.

It's fast downhill run at first then a lot of short but sharp uphill grades, around mile 2, just north of the Impact Baptist Church, the trail turns UGLY, well if you don't have suspension, which our trikes "do not"!!!  For a couple of miles there are "6 inch deep and 3 to 6 inch wide crevasses" covering the whole trail, a lot of them so we had to go "VERY SLOW" so as not to damage or be tipped over by this section, we both actually had our "chains pop off the front chain wheel, it was that rough!!  After that it was ok in some and less but still ROUGH along whole rest of the trail. :( We got to Manitou Lake, used the restrooms, pulled up a nice flat rock and ate a Cliff Bar or two and drank more water. Finally we headed back and found out there's a LOT more hills going back. On a couple some dirt had washed over the trail and JoLynn lost traction so we had to walk her tike up the hills!  We finally got back, quite tired as having to go so slow and losing so much momentum added 1-hr. each way to the total time to ride the trail.  The views are stunning, it's such a SHAME that the trail has such poor maintenance in some sections, it could be so very fun to ride! :(