I have been trying to get out on some more bike trails for photos ~ as well as to enjoy the rides and scenery ~ and I now have some more fall scenery photos posted on this site and more trail info and photos to come soon.

First, I rode a section of the Illinois and Michigan Canal bike trail (I&M Trail) from Marseilles to just before La Salle, Il. with a friend on Monday. This was a continuation of a ride that we did way back in 2003! This was a really nice ride and I have plenty of photos but I do not have these uploaded just yet (I will have this done in a few days and will post another blog entry when they are complete).

Next, since it was another nice day on Tuesday, I decided to pick another wooded bike trail that I already knew about for some fall color photos (and a ride, of course).

I choose the Millennium Trail this time and have selected and posted my photos from this ride on the following pages. See Millennium Trail Fall Photos 6 ~ Lakewood Forest Preserve and Millennium Trail Fall Photos 7 ~ One Mile Loop for the photos from this ride.

I thought that the trees might be pretty bare already since it is getting a little past peak fall color season but I found that there was still plenty of color out there when you look for it. It seems like earlier in the fall the trees have more leaves and you get more greens and yellows but later in the season although many of the leaves have already fallen there are still trees with leaves and it seems like there are more reds and browns at this time.

Enhanced Photos

One thing that I wanted to point out with the photos is that after selecting the best of the photos that I took I also enhanced them a little with my photo editing program. In most cases I boosted the color just a little, straightened the photos that were crooked and cropped a few.

This is a pretty common thing to do these days and I still try to keep the photos looking as natural as possible and like the original scene looked. I just consider this making a good photo better but for artistic honesty, I think you should be aware that they were touched up a little (no, I am just not that great of a photographer (without a little help anyway)).

Trail Conditions

I also wanted to mention one thing about the current condition of the Millennium Trail. They are currently doing construction on some parts of the trail right at the Lakewood Forest Preserve parking area off of Fairfield Road.

When I was there on Tuesday they had just paved the trail right by the parking lot and you could only go a short distance before it was blocked off. At that time you needed to cut through the playground area and get to the main part of the trail in the Lakewood Forest Preserve.

I also noticed that they made a new section of the trail that now goes north (from the parking lot) and through a tunnel under Route 176. I’m not sure exactly when this will be complete or where it will ultimately go but it’s nice to see that they are expanding the trail and adding highway underpasses.

I am also curious just how much of this trail they are going to pave. Personally, I don’t mind the crushed stone but, for the most part, having the trail paved will probably be a nice improvement.

Although I haven’t been on any new bike trails recently, I just had to get out and enjoy the fall colors on some of the more wooded bike trails that I knew about and had already ridden and to get some autumn bike trail photos for this site.

We are pretty close to peak fall color season here in the Chicagoland area ~ I’m not sure if we are a little past the peak or if it is going to get even better but it was definitely nice enough for some beautiful trail rides.

I had quite a few choices for wooded trails and I initially chose The Des Plaines River Trail (near Euclid / Lake Street) and the North Branch Trail (south of Lake Street). My other runner-ups were Busse Woods,  Millennium Trail (south end) , the Moraine Hills trails and the Fox River Trail. I’m sure there are others too but there is only so much time for trail riding (even in peak fall color season)! 🙂

Most of the time when I ride a new bike trail ~ or parts of a trail that I had not been on ~ and bring my camera my goal is to photograph and document as much of the trail as I can (and try to get get quality photos).

My goal for the bike trail photos that I just took was to capture the fall colors and maybe even get some creative shots. So these photos do not cover a specific route as much as just give you the feel of riding these trails in the fall. It’s all about the colors!

The photo on the right is one of my more creative fall color photos. This one is one of the mushroom photos in the Des Plaines River Trail photo pages (you’ll know what that means if you check out the photo pages).

So without further yaking here are the new Fall Color Bike Trail Photo Pages: See the Des Plaines River Trail Fall Photos here (3 pages) and see the North Branch Trail Fall Photos here (2 pages).

A little bad news for me and other small businesses on the Internet…

It was really nice to be able to get out and enjoy some scenic fall bike rides and I needed that after the bashing that my websites (including about-bicycles.com) took from Google recently.

Google does updates quite often to try to improve their search results. A lot of the time they succeed and their search results improve. Other times they get worse.

The about-bicycles.com bike site took a big hit with the last round of Google updates and the traffic to this site has dropped significantly. We used to get over 3,000 visitors per day in peak cycling season. It is much less now but fortunately we still show up in the search results fairly well (unlike some other small businesses that were basically ruined by this update).

Google used to state that they supported small businesses and individual website owners but it appears that they are now favoring big business. Just check out the search results and see how many times you only get the largest internet sites and little if any smaller sites (often low quality too).

OK, sorry about rambling on about this but I do have a reason for mentioning it here.

If you like any of the pages on this website, like the new fall photo pages that I just posted, please “Like”, “Tweet” or use one of the other social media buttons at the bottom of each webpage on this website. This will not fix all of the damage that the Google update did to this website but it will help a little and every little bit helps.

At least a lot of our pages that got dropped still show up on Bing and Yahoo! (just an FYI if you want to help break Googles Big Business Monopoly) :-).

Although I have not personally been out on any new bike trails recently (to report on) one our our website visitors had just ridden the Illinois Great River Trail ~ from Moline to Savanna, Illinois ~ and was nice enough to share his detailed (57 mile) ride information with us.

I was actually just looking into riding this trail a little while back so I was very interested in hearing what this trail was like. Our website visitor, Carlos of Chicago, initially sent a brief email telling me of his recent ride on the Great River Trail. I asked for a little more detail (just to see if it was a trail that I may want to ride sometime) and I was quite surprised at the detailed ride report that I received!

I received a well written and very detailed description of his ride(s) on the GRT and even a few photos taken from the trail and surrounding area. I asked Carlos if it was OK to post his article and photos and he agreed that it would be OK.

Here is a link to the NEW Illinois Great River Trail Ride Report and Photos that we just received and posted.

I often see this trail refereed to as simply “The Great River Trail” but I remember posting another bike trail article on the Great River Trail, in Wisconsin, some years back, that also runs along the Mississippi from the Onalaska to Marshland in Wisconsin, which is why I usually specify that this is the Illinois Great River Trail.

I hope you enjoy the new Great River Trail article and thank you Carlos for sharing this information with us!

I have been wanting to check out the trails in the Moraine Hills State Park (just south-east of McHenry) for a while now and finally had a chance to ride the trails last Tuesday (7/3). This was during our heat wave and our drought but the ride was still scenic and it is a really nice area for a fairly short ride and photos.

Wetlands and Stream in Moraine Hills State Park

I had my camera and GPS Bike Computer with me so I could post photos and document the ride of course and I have posted quite a few photos, along with the bike trail article on this trail here at the Moraine Hills Bike Trail Photos and Ride Report.

As I was updating my photos and the article on this bike trail I searched for other photos of this park and trail and found that it looks quite different at different times of the year. My photos are from a drought in the middle of summer but the scenery looks quite different in the spring, fall and winter. I hope to make a few more trips out there in the different seasons to check out the contrast. When I do, I’ll try to add some updates to the new Moraine Hills Trail pages.

Where I parked, at Pike Marsh (on the south-eastern part of the park), you can get on the main Moraine Hills Trail and the River Road Trail which runs mostly parallel to the MHT at that point . I accidentally got on the River Road Trail and took a 3 mile detour when I first started. This was still the same are and it was also a pretty nice ride but it was not on the actual Moraine Hills Trails.

When I got back on the main trail again I headed south-west first to the Fox River and the McHenry Dam and then around the Black Tern Marsh. This area looked nice but I stopped at one point, close to the marsh and got attacked by some kind of flies. I had to get

Lake Defiance in the Distance

moving again to ditch them. Later I stopped by the Black Tern Viewing Platform, which was very nice (and no flies) and took some photos.

After that, I headed north again (to the other side of River Road) and rode both loops on the northern part of the park. The loop on the west side goes into what they call the Northern Woods and goes around the Leatherleaf Bog Nature Preserve and the loop on the east side goes around Lake Defiance.

I picked up a map of the park and trails at the park entrance which I have scanned and posted on the Moraine Hills Trail article (the link above) along with the GPS map of my ride (including the River Road detour).

As for the trail itself, it is a combination of crushed stone and paved surfaces (mostly crushed stone) and was in very good condition. There is also a combination of hills and flat lands. Most of it is fairly flat with a few steep hills mostly in the northern section (you can actually see the hills and elevations on the GPS map of my ride that I posted with the article linked to above (using the “Player”option on the Garmin page).

Well, that’s about it for this ride (until I check it out in another season). If you are looking for a fairly short, leisurely ride in a nice park with some nice scenery to enjoy or photograph then you may want to check out the Moraine Hills State Park Trails.

I was finally able to get out to the Evanston Lakefront Bikeways earlier this week for a ride, photos and ride report. It was a little windy but still a beautiful day on Monday when I rode the Evanston Bike Paths.

Lake Michigan as seen from the Evanston Lakefront Bike Path.

I often refer to this route as “bikeways” since this is not really a specific bike path but a series of bike paths, a bike lane on Sheridan Road, roads through Northwestern University and even sidewalks that you need to ride on to get through all of Evanston along Lake Michigan.

I started my ride in Wilmette ~ around Gillson Park ~ rode down Sheridan Road to Northwestern University ~ where you can get on a bike path right next to Lake Michigan ~ through Evanston and even into Chicago where I turned around at Rogers Avenue Beach.

Most of this ride is very nice although it is not a bike path the entire way and you need to hop on to roads and sidewalks to get through Evanston. I think that the best part of this bike route is the bike path that starts at Northwestern University and goes south to Lee street. This part is almost all paved and right next to Lake Michigan although is is only a 2 mile stretch.

The Baha'i temple in Wilmette

Another nice thing about this bike route is that you can connect to the Green Bay Trail at the north end or to the Chicago Lakefront Bike Path on the south (although you need to ride about a mile and a half in the city to get to it).

I brought my camera and GPS bike computer to document the ride and post it here, of course so you can read all about this bike path ~ and see the photos ~ at the new Evanston Lakefront Bikeways page.

I really enjoyed this ride and I always love being out by Lake Michigan (especially on really hot days) but one of my favorite parts of this ride was my side trip to the Baha’i temple in Wilmette for photos and my ride to the beach at Gillson Park (also in Wilmette). The Baha’i temple is a beautiful building and I actually spent a lot of time at the beach at Gillson Park when I was younger and I still like it there.

Since I had my camera with me for the bike ride photos, I took advantage of the photo op at the Bahai temple and I also posted quite a few photos of this landmark building on the last photo page for this ride. This is probably one of my favorite bike trail photo pages now even though most of it is not actually on a bike trail. You can see these photos here at the Evanston Lakefront Bike Path Photo Page 4.

I have been aware of the Bahai temple and knew where it was for many years but I never actually went over to it for a closer visit. I was glad that I did on this trip. The building, architecture, and exterior decorations are beautiful and made for some good photos.

Although I had heard of the Bahai faith ~ mostly because of some songs on a Seals and Crofts album (they wrote and recorded the song “Summer Breeze” and were Bahai followers) ~ I ended up looking up a bunch of information on the religion and on the temple in Wilmette on the internet when I got back and was posting the photos and bike ride article.

I thought that it was really interesting that some of the columns on the temple were decorated with swastikas along with the star of David and the Christian cross.  After looking this up on the internet I found that the swastika has been around for centuries and has been used as a symbol good things for various religions and civilizations long before it was used as a symbol for hatred and racism by the Nazis.

Well that’s it for the Evanston Lakefront bike ride. This is prime-time bike riding season so I’ll be selecting, riding and reporting on another trail soon and hope that you cyclists out there are also able to get out and enjoy some good riding!

I have wanted to check out the gap in the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) just south of Lincolnshire for quite some time now and made it a priority since some visitors to this site had organized a 61 mile ride in the surrounding area and were planning on using this part of the trail for the ride and I offered to see if you could get through or not.

I discovered that, although there is a 1/4 mile gap in the trail it is shorter than it used to be and much easier to get around than it was a few years back when I had ridden on this part of the trail.

Des Plaines River Trail around Lincolnshire

It was also a beautiful day for a ride on Friday and I did a nice, scenic 12 mile ride on this part of the trail which included sections that I had never been on before.

I brought my camera and bike GPS (of course) since I needed to document the gap in the trail and I had planned to ride another trail in Evanston later in the day.

After I discovered that I could get through the 1/4 mile gap I just decided to ride further south on the DPRT and photograph and document this part of the trail for this website since I had previously only ridden and written about the northern parts of this trail ~ from Lincolnshire north to the Wisconsin border.

Dirt Bike Path next to Milwaukee Ave.

The Gap in the Des Plaines River Trail

As for the gap in the trail, it is around Lincolnshire just south of the 28 Mile marker on the trail (as you head south) and the signs direct you out to Milwaukee Avenue. Milwaukee Ave. is a busy and major road but there is a sidewalk on one side and a dirt path, next to the road, on the other side (see the photo).

This is only a very short distance (right around the Par-King miniature golf course and north of the Cubby Bear restaurant) so it is not a big deal if you need to connect from the northern part of the DPRT to the southern part.

You get back on to the Des Plains River Trail at the back of the Cubby Bear parking lot.

The Photos and Ride Report

As I mentioned, I had already ridden, photographed and posted an article and photos of the Des Plaines River Trail from Lincolnshire north all the way to just before the Wisconsin border here. Unfortunately, these rides were from 2004 and 2005 and the quality of the photos are not nearly as good as the newer photos (I am just going to have to ride that part of the trail again and upgrade the photos I guess!)

The photos and ride report that I just did on Friday include  The Des Plaines River Trail Photo Page 8, Photo Page 9, Photo Page 10, and Photo Page 11. My bike trail photo pages use kind of an old style photo display format but it is consistent and fairly easy to navigate with the links at the bottom and at the top of the pages. There is also a link to the GPS map at the bottom of these pages if you want to see exactly where this ride was.

DPRT Trail Conditions

As for the conditions of the trail in this section there were no problems at all (other than having to go along Milwaukee Ave for the 1/4 mile to get around the gap in the trail). Keep in mind that most of the DPRT is a crushed stone trail so if you prefer a paved path you’ll need to find another. The surfaces in this section were in pretty good shape.

The underpasses in the DPRT have signs well ahead of time letting you know if they are open or not. Since the underpasses go along the river and under the roads, I have seen them flood occasionally when the river is high. That is no problem at all right now with it being as dry as it has been recently. The only underpass on this particular section of the trail was at Deerfield Road.

Next Trail Rides

I still plan on riding some of the trails that I just discovered in Evanston next but one of my missions after that is to ride further south on the Des Plains River Trail. I kind of wished that I went further south on Friday but Dundee Road seems to be a natural (or actually not so natural) barrier and it looked impossible to cross during rush hour (when I was there). There may be a way to get to the intersection and cross there but I did not check into that.

I understand that the DPRT goes quite a bit further south from here and that some sections are very nice and scenic. If you are really ambitious (and get up early enough) you could ride the entire Des Plains River Trail from the city of Des Plaines (or possibly even further south ~ like I said I have not been on that part of the trail) all the way north to just before the Wisconsin border (and back?) now that would be quite a ride!