Saturday & Saylorville Lake

The end of the day in our back yard

Real Saturdays begin in spring.  Do you feel that way?  After a winter huddled inside, we are delighted to drink tea in the Adirondack chair in the back yard, look at the resurrection lilies, and wonder if we can plant lettuce soon.  Everything's still brown, but we bicycled past a garden center at the Hy-Vee. Too busy to stop, though.

For us Saturdays mean bicycling.  We loaded up on peanut butter cookies (recipe at allrecipesdotcom), stowed our books and jackets in the panniers, and bicycled on the Neal Smith trail to Saylorville Lake.  A warm breeze, and I cannot tell you how nice it is to be riding in a sweater and jeans again!  The Neal Smith trail, constructed in 1988, is 24 miles, ripples through woods and past the Des Moines River, and goes from downtown Des Moines to Saylorville Lake to Polk City to Big Creek State Park.  Last summer we never got farther than the butterfly garden.  Today we rode up and down hills--don't let anyone tell you the prairie is flat.  One of the hills is half a mile long.  

Finally we reached an appropriate bench.  Then I took a few pictures (which didn't come out very well).

Saylorville Lake, surrounded by woods & prairie grass

 This is how it will look soon:  

Gulls on Saylorville Lake

Here is the traditional bicycle rack picture.  Yes, every bike trip I take a picture of our parked bikes.  This bench comes with its own bike rack.

We took photos of each other and then dove into our books.  I'm reading Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea (it seemed an appropriate title to bring to the lake).   I need to read the classics.  The new books I've read in the past few weeks, even when well-written, may not hold up.  Some are good, but most are transient, and they're instructive about the thinking of publishers and marketing departments.  This means this, and this records this, and this will keep them reading...  I'm beginning to like historical novels because the contemporary stuff (I'm thinking Niffenegger and Egan) is somehow high-strung. 

Anyway, home again, more reading, and I'll be back to book-blogging SOON.