Mueller Park

We interrupt this vacation report... Wait a minute, who am i kidding? No one has made it through an entire post yet. Apparently, my goal of one trip post per day has already fallen by the wayside. Doh! I was just too busy. And and now i'm a little behind, no wait; i've fallen behind. There, that's better.

Anyway, the other day i finally convinced Joe, my brother-in-law, to take the dirt bikes up Mueller Park. Mueller Park has long been one of my favorite mountain bike rides, and i had seen dirt bikes on the trail a number of times (there are also some signs indiciating dirt bikes are permitted). Anyway, there's a couple of trails that head off from the meadow at the top that i had always wanted to explore. i hoped they would either connect with the City Creek trails or traverse the ridges north or south. But the trails would usually get too rocky to be enjoyable on a mountain bike. On dirt bikes i figured we could actually explore for a while.

Unfortunately, either the trails were really, really old or were just game trails. (Joe is actually standing on the trail, and where i'm standing, taking the picture, is also on the trail).
The one that went up eventually became too overgrown to even find on foot.
And the one that went down looked like it would probably connect in City Creek, but was so overgrown and steep that it wouldn't be enjoyable on a bike. Oh well, now i know.

Since the last time i rode up there (probably four weeks ago), the flowers have really popped up all over the place. Really, really pretty. And going back down the backside was actually much more enjoyable on a dirt bike.

And we only got a couple of crusties from anti-motorcycle trail users. Oi! Don't get me started on anti-trail or anti-trail users. No seriously, you don't want me to get started - you know i'm long winded.

I highly recommend this trail to mtn. bikers, hikers, and yes, even motorcycles. However, i must insert that i also highly recommend that bikes and even more so motorcycles, exercise extreme caution when riding this trail. It's not that it's difficult, it's just a very, very popular trail and thus very busy.

My personal recommedation is that motorcycles only ride in off-peak times or just take the backside trail. I only attempt to ride it on my bike when i figure i'll be one of the first or last ones on the trail, or in the middle of the week between breakfast and lunch or right after lunch. Just because you're allowed doesn't mean (ignorant) people won't complain and try to have you banned from the trail - jerks.

These are actually all pictures from the backside of Mueller Park (except the couple up top while we were exploring). We tried to get off of the front side as quickly as possible to annoy as few people as possible. But don't get me wrong, the vast majority of the trail users we encountered were extremely polite and pleasant.


It absolutely amazed my how green this trail still was! Oh, and some kind soul or souls cleaned all the obstacles off of the trail, so it's all ride-able, well, at least for someone like me. It may have already been ride-able to everyone else before.


This is actually a little closer to the bottom. The picture does not do justice to all the wildflowers that were out. So pretty!
I wonder if planting some of these in my garden would be a mistake...

Oh, and Dacia and Joe have been asking me for a while for a picture (hopefully) like this, is this kind of like what you were looking for?