Troop 11 - Bruce Freeman Rail Trail

With bike rides, I only occasionally will add a blog entry.  But with a new trail I will make an exception. 
Today, the plan is for Troop 11 to do 15 miles on the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail in Acton.  Well, we're going to start into Acton and ride up into Chelmsford center and stop for ice cream.  I found the trail description in my Rails-to-Trails book of bike trails in New England.  I printed the map, but little did I know that the trail has actually been expanded quite a bit since the book was published.  The trail extends 3 miles further north than we rode as well as another 2 miles to the south.  There is also a small piece of the trail in Concord and plans to extend beyond that another 21 miles to Framingham.  That will make a nice long, traffic-free rail trail.

In any event we started out at about 5:20pm from NARA Park in Acton.

Six boys and three adults waiting for one more leader to arrive in a fenced off portion of the NARA Park parking lot.

After pedaling 6.9 miles, we stop by the ice cream place whilst trying to find a little shade in the parking lot.  There weren't enough benches and they were in the sun anyway.

The Chelmsford Town Beach is viewable from the trail.  The parking lot was full and beach was very busy as well.

So we're going to have to go a little further to hit 15 miles (one of the requirements for Biking Merit Badge).  So Mr. O says to go down to "the cool bridge that passes over Rt 2A."  I still have dinner to eat this evening, so I take off by myself so I can relay info to those behind me.  We cross Rt. 27 again, but I can't find another obvious place to turn around to keep it at an even 15 miles.  Once I did turn around mid-bridge and headed back to the park, My final mileage was 16.5 miles.  Oh well, just couldn't get that estimation perfect.  My top speed was 23.0 mph, but because I didn't pause the tracker at our 30+ minute rest stop, my "average" came out to 8.6 mph.  Anyway, when I left, all but Mr. O and a couple younger scouts had returned.  It was a brutally hot and humid day, and everyone did well despite the weather.