›› It’s time to step up your ride beyond that cruise around the neighborhood after dinner, but you’re not ready to conquer the trek up Waterton Canyon just yet.
There’s a place in Aurora for anyone to cure those wintery wobbly legs. You can get back into shape meandering the 8 miles around the Aurora Reservoir trail, easing back into life in the saddle and away from home. Or, if your bike came out of hibernation several weeks ago, you can sprint around much of the Aurora Reservoir trail when everyone packs it up for the day or before the ardent anglers get there at the crack of stupid.
The city’s largest and most developed local reservoir is a marvel on the very edge of where the city spills into Colorado’s high plains. Known primarily as a place boasting an incredible stock of fish and an oasis of a swim beach, the reservoir has a well-maintained, paved trail around the perimeter, dotted with bathrooms, mini-hills, picnic tables, an occasional tree and the even rarer mule-tail deer.
The variety of amenities, views and events at the reservoir mean you can load up the whole family or a few pals, drive out to the reservoir near the edge of civilization and not worry about empty water bottles, full bladders, rumbling stomachs or someone to sympathize with your tender saddle points. For $10, everyone in the car gets in the main gate at the end of East Quincy Road, just past the Arapahoe Park racetrack.
Or, if paying $10 to put some miles on your ride is anathema, you can ride or drive out to the reservoir and enter for free on the south side of the lake. There are trail access points at several places in the neighborhood, one with parking in Beacon Point at East Lakeview Drive and East Euclid Drive, another at the Beacon Point community center.
Once you’re on the water, the paved trail never veers far from the shore.
Even after getting your May yard chores done or if you’re recovering from too many bike beers and saddle talk from the night before, the entire circuit doesn’t take more than an hour. When the reservoir crowd goes home, the road is a fun cruise at twice an hour. When the high-plains heat sets in, the east side almost always rewards your hard work with a water-cooled breeze. After a summer squall moves on in the evenings, the view of the thunderheads riding the plains is incomparable. In the morning, the show dawn puts on for you on the western shore will make you stop and stare.
If you’re the type that’s able to plan, tie your fishing rod onto the bike frame or throw some swimming stuff into a pack and make a mini-stay-cation out of the ride. If you’re bringing kids, check out the city’s hands-on water-museum, teaching kids about how it is a big city can exist in a virtual desert, and how important it is to conserve the West’s most precious resource.
Whether you live in the neighborhood or Aurora’s most urban reaches, you’ll end feeling road cheery, not rode weary.