Cardinal Greenway

The Cardinal Greenway is the longest rail-trail in Indiana and spans 62 miles from Marion through Muncie to Richmond in East Central Indiana. This morning we put the bike rack on the truck and headed to the Losantville Trailhead. It's the nearest trailhead and is 9.5 miles from here.

It was 12:30 p.m. when we got on the trail. We asked a guy at the trailhead for advice, and he suggested that heading south would be preferable. It’s his favorite section, and he said that the section going north to Muncie is just open fields, whereas heading south there’s tree cover. So that’s what we did. We looked at the map and decided to go to the Williamsburg Trailhead at MM 74. The Losantville Trailhead is at MM 86.5, so that makes a round trip of about 25 miles.

The route is mostly straight and nearly level, with slight grades that made us work some. A cardinal flew across our path—the first cardinal we’ve seen recently, despite having heard many. Guess it knew it was on its namesake trail! We ate lunch at the Williamsburg Trailhead, which has a picnic shelter.

Much of the route is through farmland, with soybeans the predominant crop. There's something restful about the bucolic scenery.

We were glad to see we wouldn't be sharing the trail with horses.

The Greenway has unique mile markers carved into large rocks.

The ride back was pretty quick. We got to the trailhead at 3:40 p.m., for an elapsed time of 3 hrs and 10 mins. That’s an average of 7.9 miles per hour of elapsed time. It was an enjoyable ride on a smooth trail with little traffic.