Touring * Beginner *

From U.S. 50, take the Sunrise Boulevard exit heading south. After three miles, turn right at the stoplight for Douglas Road and drive past the empty guard kiosk after crossing the bridge over the canal. Just after you drive by Mather Lake, turn left onto Eagles Nest Road and drive past the golf course. Just beyond the driving range, you'll see an unmarked road on the right that is blocked off to automobile traffic. This is Woodring Road; park in front of the barricades.

On sunny spring days, in-line it to Mather Air Force Base, where you can skate alongside grassy, green fields abloom with wildflowers and in view of the white-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. (In mid-summer, you'll wonder how this drab brown scenery could possibly rate an eight.) When I last took a spring roll here, I crossed paths with few cars and even fewer bicyclists or skaters--but plenty of large jackrabbits and buzzards. Since its closing as a military base in 1993, Mather has remained relatively undiscovered by the local skating community, offering the adventurous explorer miles and miles of deserted streets. There's even a clean asphalt bike path winding through the fields on base. But the recreational potential of this location is no secret to planners in Sacramento, and the city already has big ideas for its future. Try to visit soon while you still might have most of the place to yourself. Scenic Eagles Nest Road is fair game for skating, but the pavement is quite rough. Instead, start by skating up Woodring Road into the residential ghost town. The homes, streets, and sidewalks are all still in good repair, though it's kind of eerie to skate without any signs of cars or people. Thigh-high grass grows in the front yards, yet healthy rose bushes next to the picture windows are still producing lovely blossoms. After cruising a few streets like this, it's a bit disconcerting to come around a corner and see lawns that are mowed. (The caretakers of Mather must have a rotating mowing schedule to keep the weeds at bay.) Turn right at Mather Boulevard to skate by the Youth Center on the left side of the street. Out in back, you'll find the smooth pavement of enclosed tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts, although tufts of grass are now poking up from many cracks. The sign warning that "toy wheeled vehicles" (meaning skates and skateboards) are prohibited on the courts seems rather absurd in the ghost town context. Who's going to enforce it? A gem of a bike lane picks up at the edge of the housing development and follows Mather for four miles, curving around the broad, grassy fields to gradually reach the heart of the base at the north side. Most of the small side roads the bike lane crosses are spattered with gravel, but the path itself is quite acceptably paved, and is much better than the road it parallels. Unfortunately, two miles up from the housing development, a deep 30-foot-wide culvert washout makes it difficult to continue on this route. Skate the mile back to where Mather and Douglas Road intersect, turn left to follow Douglas a quarter of a mile, and then turn right onto Eagles Nest to return to Woodring.