I thought it'd be fun and also informative to share our surprises, places that seemed like a mediocre place to ride and wound up being enjoyable. Riding in new places is usually fun, but there's a lot of road and trail out there, and it can be hard to find the right stretches.

I'll start with one of my own and one from a friend:

The Duwamish trail in south Seattle is actually a nice place to ride. I can't really put my finger on why. It's a trail that parallels a road you wouldn't want to be on, goes by a small park with a view, then disappears into a short sidewalk connecting to the bridge complex.

A friend was raving about the Oso trail paralleling 530 to Darrington. It goes into the woods at times and offers different views than the highway, passes the memorial, and goes over a lovely tressle bridge. This trail is gravel.

Middle Fork Rd out of North Bend is fantastic. It’s an out and back on relatively new pavement except for two very short gravel pieces of about 20 yards. On week days traffic is extremely light and on weekends it’s not bad at all. Stunning mtn and rive views. About 26 miles round trip.