Sometimes the best mountain biking trails in Austin feel a little like MoPac during rush hour.

Cyclists throng the Barton Creek Greenbelt, the trails at Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park and my personal favorite, the Slaughter Creek Trail, where I once took a slow-motion digger on a limestone ledge that sent me to the minor emergency room.

But at Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area, where a total of 9.8 miles of trail twist around a sweeping turn in Lake Travis, the trails rarely draw crowds. During a recent weekday ramble on the park’s Great Escape Trail, I ran into exactly two other cyclists who’d come here for the same reasons as me — to feel the gravel crunch under their tires, roll their bikes up and down sections of stair-stepped rock and maybe let a tree branch or two slap them in the face.

“I like the varied terrain, and the fact it’s a one-way loop that’s less trafficked than other places, so I can kind of disappear,” Steve Jacyna, 36, tells me before speeding away on a pedal-assist mountain bike. “I get on a bike so I can turn off my brain and ride.”

Me too. Except I can’t turn off my brain or I’ll crash.

Jacyna’s buddy Joshua Gordon, 33, likes the exercise benefits he gets from mountain biking, and the feeling of freedom and adrenaline rush it gives him. Muleshoe’s inexpensive — just $5 per person for day use — and good for camping, too, he points out.

“The trail’s right there, next to where you camp,” he says.

Today, Jacyna and Gordon, both enjoying a day off from their jobs at Bicycle Sport Shop in Austin, are headed out for two loops of the main trail.

“It’s pretty easy, so if I want to chill out I can just go,” Gordon says.

That’s easy for them to say. I’m a little nervous as I pedal out of the parking lot behind my friend Kimery Duda, director of the Expedition School in Austin. She’s capable and confident, and shouts out tips as I chase her dust. (The best one? If I get off and walk a stretch, then look back and think to myself, “I could have ridden that,” go back and try it again. That’s how you improve.)

The trail breaks me in easy. Early on, it unfurls smoothly, a ribbon of dirt that cuts through open land dotted with cedar trees. It curves and cuts, and pretty quickly I find a groove, feeling the flow of motion. That’s what I love about mountain biking — there’s no buzz of pavement to hypnotize you or cars to worry about. You carve into nature, dart between tree trunks and hop over stones.

The main Great Escape Trail bends back on itself, and I have to step off in places because I can’t negotiate some of the rocky descents and climbs. But I whiz along between those patches, gaining momentum as I gulp air. Halfway through, we cross the main paved park road. We forge on. The trail sweeps us along. At one point we see Lake Travis. We twist up and down some hills, and an hour and 15 minutes after we shoved off we wind up back at the trailhead.

The Lower Colorado River Authority acquired this property as six separate tracts beginning in 1939 for the creation of Lake Travis. In the 1990s it began managing the 615-acre parcel as a park for recreation. In all, the agency operates 43 parks along the Colorado River. In 2015, about 1.5 million people visited those parks, which cover a combined 14,000 acres.

The Austin Ridge Riders built Muleshoe’s network of biking trails, which includes the 6.5-mile main Great Escape Trail plus six short add-on loops, and helps maintain them today. Some are being upgraded now.

“We had someone come out from Colorado the other day, and he said the trails reminded him of riding in Colorado,” says Ryan Vickery, LCRA park operations coordinator lead for the West District. “There’s a lot of elevation change and some technical areas. I just like it because there’s a lot of tree coverage, so you’re not really exposed to a lot of sun.”

He especially likes some of the more challenging add-on loops, including one called Sprocket that takes cyclists close to the water’s edge, and another called the Recycler, which features lots of elevation change.

Margo Richards, vice president of community resources for LCRA, says Muleshoe is becoming one of the most popular parks in the system.

It’s known for bluebonnet viewing in the spring as much as biking trails, added a boat ramp in 2015 and recently expanded the number of campsites. Equestrians and hikers are welcome on designated multi-use trails, but cyclists who encounter horses should dismount and let the animals pass to avoid spooking them.

Contact Pam LeBlanc at 512-445-3994.