Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. Scioto Mile, Scioto and Olentangy River Trails. Sunny, 65 degrees. Lin was not with us but texted to say that it officially was “a beautiful day”. We trail headed at the Scioto Audubon Center on the Whittier Peninsula. The Center provides good parking and heated restrooms. (yay!). We rode the park road south to the Greenlawn dam where we picked up the lower Scioto River Trail and headed north up river a mile or so to downtown Columbus and the Scioto Mile. The Scioto Mile is a lovely urban riverscape of crisscrossing trails with a scenic backdrop of metro Columbus on one side and the newly free-flowing section of the Scioto River and COSI on the other. The trail proceeds north of downtown to a narrow bridge over the Olentangy River at the confluence of the two rivers. We turned left, crossed Rickenbacker Drive on a blind curve and headed up the Scioto River trail. Here the trail is narrow and a bit rough except for the new section near Grandview Ave. The trail follows a spine of land between the lakes and the Scioto River, eventually disappearing along Dublin Road in Marble Cliff. Along this section we passed the new bridge over the Scioto River that will eventually connect to the Camp Chase/Hilltop section of the Ohio to Erie trail. We returned to confluence and went north on the Olentangy River trail to the OSU campus. This is a busy section of trail. Back at confluence we skipped the west bank trail by COSI and returned on the east bank of the Scioto Mile. By this time on a warm Saturday afternoon, we encountered many walkers with dogs on long leashes and a large jogging group of Army reservists. What fun! Post ride, we retired to the Spaghetti Warehouse where we competed with a huge birthday party group and the Easy Riders Motorcycle Club for seating. (Go figure.) The food was good as usual but the Yuengling Lagers we ordered never showed up. (Blown tap! Hey, don’t we get a second choice?) In retrospect, I believe that this trail network is not suitable for large recumbent groups. It is a single-file trail with some technical sections (sidewalks on bridges and blind intersections, etc.) and way too crowded for any weekend ride. The lack of facilities or even cornfields also lessens the appeal.