The Palouse Cascades Trail part 2, Biking from Tekoa to Seabury and back.

Yesterday I tool a sixteen mile trip on a section of the Palouse Cascades Trail on my old trusty mountain bike.

I started my trip in the small town of Tekoa. It is one of the nicer towns in the Palouse and has several historic buildings including this old art deco movie theater. Across the street is a small park with a public restroom, a rare amenity out here in farm country.

The landmark Tekoa trestle dominates the local landscape. This 976 foot long and 125 foot high structure carried the transcontinental Milwaukee Road rail line over Hangman Creek, State Road 27 and another old railroad easement.

There is a trailhead off Washington Street on the east side of the trestle with interpretive signage and a picnic table. This trail is managed as a Washington State Park and extends from the Idaho state line almost to the Seattle area.

From the trestle there is a view of the town looking up Hangman Creek. In the background is Liberty Butte, one of several large hills embedded in the middle of an expanse of wheat fields.

The trail winds through miles of agricultural land alternating between cuts through the hills and embankments between them.

About three miles in you come to Lone Pine. There are the remains of an old grain loading facility here and not much else.

Wheat is the main crop here and in places they cultivate it right to the edge of the trail bed. About eighty percent of the fields I rode by were already harvested but some were still waiting for the combines.

Tekoa is in Whitman County which bills itself as the largest wheat producing county in the United States.

Amber waves as far as the eye can see. From the trail you get to see scattered farm buildings and spacious skies.

I crossed under one old bridge. The trail surface varied from rough ballast to fresh gravel and some areas of dried compacted dirt. I don’t usually ride on gravel and going sixteen miles on it was like riding forty on pavement.

I came across two places where small bridges had been removed and the state build a bypass trail.

Just before my turn around place, I arrived at the historic Seabury Bridge. I walked the bike across as some of the gaps in the decking could easily catch a bicycle tire and eight miles is a long way to walk back. There is a lot of useful information about the trail on the home page for the Palouse Cascade Trail Coalition, a non-profit group dedicated to supporting improvements to the trail.

The Seabury Bridge crossed over another railroad which is now also abandoned. Here you can see the cut of the Spokane Inland Empire branch that at one time extended all the way to Lewiston.

Here is the best view I could get of this impressive structure. It’s long way down to the bottom and the land down there is privately owned.

So here was the end of my ride. Washington State Parks put up these mile markers at the same spots the railroad at one time had them. They show the distance from the start of the railroad in Chicago.

The way back was pretty but I did have to deal with a decent head wind. Winds on the Palouse are usually out of the southwest or west. Today it was out of the northeast.

It was a relief to make it back to Tekoa. That’s Tekoa Mountain in the background looking northeast from the deck of the trestle.

The 287 mile long trail almost spans Washington. Through Eastern Washington it is lightly used. I was the only one on it for all sixteen miles. Earlier this summer I had hiked the section along Pine Creek and Rock Lake. This was the first time I rode part of it. Next time I’ll bring a couple of replacement inner tubes just in case.