Home or High Water – Tips for Riding the Flood Out

Flooded Road

The flooded part of Huntington/Freeman Road

There is a lot of flooding in northern Illinois right now so you can either stay at home and not ride (not a good option for me), find dry places to ride (great if you can) or know how to make it through flooded areas on the local trails (and roads) – Which is what this post is about.

The Paul Douglas Trail (PDT) is a trail that is very close to where I live so I ride that one quite a bit. It is a somewhat hilly trail so there is standing water on many parts of the trail and there is one location, along Huntington/Freeman Road that floods every year. Sometimes it is not deep and you can make it through but often it is too deep and too far to ride through.

Fortunately you can take a short easy detour around the flooded trail section on the road itself. Unfortunately, with the flooding that we have had recently, this road is even flooded and closed in that same location. 🙁

Can it Be Crossed???

Well, I still wanted to ride the part of the trail on the trail on the other side of the flood so I checked out the flood on the road (that the people in front of me thought was too deep and long to cross) to see if it looked possible to cross.

Well, it was probably about 100 feet long and 3 to 5 inches deep but I could see the double yellow line pretty well through the whole thing and it was on the paved road with no obstacles so I decided to go for it! Using a little trick that I learned quite a while ago I made it through just fine and with fairly dry feet even. I really don’t like getting my shoes and feet soaked riding through floods which I have had happen in the past so here are a couple of tips to help get you through floods and deep puddles without getting soaked.

Tips for Staying Dry Riding through Flooded Areas (and puddles) on Bike Trails (or roads).

Of course if goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), not all floods are passable (without getting really wet or going wading or swimming in the process). This is where the first tip applies – Use Common Sense! 🙂

If you access the situation and know that the water is not too deep (lets say 5 or 6 inches or less) and there are no major obstacles (like debris in or under the water) then you can probably make it through without getting wet.

OK, after all of that, here is the Main Tip that I wanted to pass along: Use the right gear (not too low or too high), go fast enough to get through without stopping but not too fast and keep your pedals mostly horizontal, about half way up/down with one foot in front of the other. Then pedal back and forth but DO NOT go all the way around (this keeps your feet out of the water at the bottom of the cycle).

Keeping feet dry pedaling through flooded trail

Keeping feet dry another day when I could make it through on the trail

It’s best to have the foot on your dominate or stronger leg in front because that is the one that will be dong all the work. You can’t go fast this way and it is not good if you need a lot of power but it will usually be just fine to make it through the flood if you did not underestimate how passable it is.

There you have my main tip but “wait there’s more“! OK, this one is pretty simple (and maybe obvious) but one of the best ways that I have found to keep my legs dry while riding through deep puddles is to bend your legs and put your feet up behind you as you ride through. This works for my road bike but may not work on all bikes. The key here is to put them behind you (not in front of you).

Trail turtle

Trail Turtle!

I also have a good sized rack/pack on the back of my bike which is also really nice at keeping the mud and water off my back (no more mud streak on the back of my  shirt!). Of course, fenders work fine for this too but that is not my style.

And finally, I just had to add the following photo – Be sure to Share the Trail with Our Reptile Friends!

Paul Douglas and Poplar Creek Trails – and the Secret Passage

This weekend I rode the west side of the Paul Douglas Trail (PDT) and the Poplar Creek Trail (PCT) together for a nice 21.6 mile ride! I have noticed that these 2 bike trails are fairly close to each other but only recently have found the secret passage that you can take to go from one trail to the other.

Paul Douglas Trail

Paul Douglas Trail

OK, it might not be that much of a secret (especially now that I am putting it out on the internet for everyone to see) but I have not seen other riders taking this route and never knew about it myself.

Before I talk about my ride, I’ll describe how to connect to either of these trails from the other one. It’s actually a nice route and very safe (when you pay attention). I’ll describe going from PDT to PCT since that is the way that I went/ From the west side of the Paul Douglas Trail where it runs alongside of Freeman Road, there is a stop sign on the road for Lakewood Blvd and the path has blacktop out to the road where you can cross.

Lakewood Blvd is a wide 4 lane divided road with hardly any traffic at all so it is a great bike route (and very safe). You take Lakewood west and a little before Barrington Road is a little commercial area road called Eagle Way (also very little traffic). You go left on to Eagle Way all the way around the Siemens Healthcare building (the road turns to the right after the building) out to where it ends at some parking lots on Central Road. You hop over a small grass median to the parking lot and can cross Central Road here easily. This is near Ginos East Pizza on Barrington and Central Roads.

Next there is a bike path along Barrington Road at this point where you can go along Barrington Road and cross Interstate 90. Getting over the interstate is quite an obstacle, of course, but it is really not that bad here. There are pedestrian signals at each expressway entrance and exit (which you mostly do not even need) and each crossing is one way traffic so once it clears you just ride across. Of course, you do need to pay attention here to avoid becoming road kill!

And for the final stretch after you cross the interstate, you cross Barrington Road at Hassle Road (you really need the pedestrian signal here cause it is really heavy traffic here). Next you take Hassel to Greenspoint Pkwy and go left (this is just hotels and parking lots in this area) and finally cross Higgins, Route 72 and you are at Poplar Creek Trail!

Just a weird little side note but Higgins, Route 72 is a divided highway that has pedestrian signals here. The weird thing is that there is NO BUTTON to cross Route 72 westbound traffic but there is a button for the signal once you get into the median?!?!? Really? It’s like good luck getting across that part but if you make it then you can use the pedestrian signal to get across the rest of it?!? 🙂

Map of the Secret Passage:

OK, now that I have spent most of the time with this blog post explaining directions for the secret passage between PDT and PCT, here’s a link to the GPS map of my ride on these 2 trails on the Garmin site. The map is probably a lot easier to zoom in on to figure out than my directions above but now you have both. Note that the trail connection is only about 1 mile each way and most of it a pretty easy ride.

Back to the Ride on these 2 Trails:

OK, now that you know how to get from one trail to the other, I’ll give a brief summary of my ride and the conditions of the trails as of this Labor Day 2019 weekend.

First I rode the Paul Douglas Trail since this one is closer to where I live. I only rode the west side (West of Ela Road) because the trail is closed at this time where it runs along Roselle Road due to construction on the Bike Bridge over Central Road. This should be nice when it is done… but not yet.  Anyway the entire trail east of Ela is open and ridable – Even the usual flood area on the west side along Freeman Road.

Bode Lake PCT

Bode Lake off Poplar Creek Trail

After the trail connection described above, I rode the Poplar Creek Trail. I rode the entire main loop of the PCT which is about 8.8 miles. I haven’t ridden this entire trail in quite a while and noticed that it was a lot hillier than I remembered. It is actually hilly and curvy which I do not like much. The hills are a lot of work to go up and you lose the momentum coming down because it’s too dangerous to go flying downhill on a narrow path with curves.

Still, aside from the hills (and the road crossings) this is a very nice and scenic trail. I particularly like the southern part of the trail where it goes around Bode Lake and the entire main loop is also open and passable at this time.

So that’s it for this particular ride and the current conditions of the PDT and PCT. For more information and photos of these trails see the Paul Douglas Trail pages on this site for that trail and the Poplar Creek Trail pages for that one.

Note: The photos in this article are old and from those pages (since I didn’t take any on my ride this weekend)

Enjoy the Ride! Later!

Rides on the Little Miami Scenic Trail, Ohio

A few weeks ago, towards the end of July, I packed up my bike and myself and drove out to Ohio to ride the Little Miami Scenic Trail (LMST). This was a 5 1/2 hour drive for me so I stayed one night and had 2 rides on the trail. This is an excellent trail!

Morrow Train Station

Morrow Train Station on LMST

I have also just finished posting the ride photos and ride report of this trail on this site. See Little Miami Scenic Trail Photos and Ride Details for more information on this trail.

The photo included here is the old train station in the town of Morrow. To me, this is really a good visual example of what rails-to-trails is about, with the trail right next to the old train station.

The LMST is a 78 mile paved trail that runs from  Urbana, Ohio (northeast of Dayton) to the outskirts of Cincinnati and mostly follows the Little Miami River.

I rode about 71 miles on my rides but since I have to do round trip rides, to get back to my vehicle, I only covered about 35 miles or less than 1/2 of the trail. I rode from Xenia south to South Lebanon on the 2 rides. The trail was in great shape, fairly flat, not very crowded and just a really nice trail to ride. I would definitely recommend this trail if you get a chance to ride it.

As I mentioned above, there is a lot more information and quite a few photos on the LMST trail pages on this website that I linked to above.

Rode 5 New Trails in One Day!

Back in June a friend and I decided that we would ride the Military Ridge Trail west from near Madison, Wisconsin.

Bike Trail Roundabout, Madison

We only got about 3 miles or so and ran into a highway underpass that was badly flooded from the many storms that we had at that time.

So we turned around and headed east on the Military Ridge Trail instead. This turned out to be a great ride and after a few miles we came to the Bike Trail Roundabout intersection shown in the photo here.

I had never seen anything like this before. Actually I do not think that there are many of these bike trail roundabouts in this country! When I did a Google search I saw one in Holland, of course but that is a huge biking country and just about everyone there rides bikes.

Anyway, I believe that the Bike Trail Roundabout is in Madison but it is right where the towns of Madison and Fitchburg meet so it could be in Fitchburg.

The Bike Trail Roundabout is like a regular automobile roundabout, or traffic circle except it is an intersection of bike trails. In this case it is where 5 different bike trails meet.  The trails are 1) The Badger State Trail, 2) The Cannonball Path, 3) The Southwest Path, 4) The Military Ridge Trail and 5) The Capital City Trail. WOW!

So even though our ride west on the Military Ridge Trail was cut short it was probably more interesting discovering all of these trails anyway.

Our ride was primarily on the Military Ridge Trail and the Cannonball Trail but we also rode a little ways on the Badger State Trail and did very short rides on the Capital City Trail and another trail that we found in Verona, Wisconsin called the Ice Age Trail.

I didn’t really know what a great biking area Madison is and that there were so many good trails there. I’m sure I will be going back to ride more of them.

I did not get a lot of photos of these trails but I did get some and I just completed the trail pages on this website for these trails.

See The Military Ridge Trail pages and The Cannonball Path pages , on this website, for the photos and ride stories for these 2 trails. I also took a Google Photo Sphere photo at the Bike Roundabout which has a link on these bike trail pages also.

Door County Bike Trails

I had an opportunity to ride some of the main bike trails in Door County, Wisconsin last month (the first week of June) and I have just completed the Bike Trail Page  updates on this site with New Photos and 2 New Videos.

Door County Sunset Trail

Door County Sunset Trail

The 2 trails that I rode were the Ahnapee Trail and the Peninsula State Park (PSP) Sunset Trail. There were already trail pages and photos for these 2 trails on this site but they were from 2003 so I gave them an update with some really good photos and the videos too.

I really liked both of these trails. The Ahnapee trail is much longer than the Sunset Trail but you get a good workout with the hills on the Sunset Trail even though that one is a little less than 10 miles. The Sunset Trail also has some nice views of the various bays from Lake Michigan.

Although I really enjoyed the rides on these trails, I also brought my Nikon DSLR camera and iPhone for photos and videos and I rode with Dale Kiffel who also had his camera and takes excellent photos (like the Sunset Trail one in this post).

In addition to the still photos and videos I also took some panoramic photos with my phone and even did a few 3D spherical photos for Google Maps Street View (with the Street View app on my phone) so I was really workin the trail (in addition to having fun)! 🙂

You can see the updates, all the new photos, the Street View photos and the 2 videos from the updated pages below:

Ahnapee Trail Photos, Videos and Updates

PSP Sunset Trail Photos, Videos and Updates

I have also included quite a few nice Door County Sunset Photos with the PSP Sunset Trail pages. They were not actually taken from the trail, but were from the same area after our rides and fit the Sunset Trail theme pretty well too.

I hope you enjoy the articles, photos and videos…

Paul Douglas Trail and Central Road Construction

Paul Douglas Trail along Central Road (before)

Paul Douglas Trail along Central Road (before)

I just rode the Paul Douglas Trail today and found that they are really doing a lot of construction on the south part of the trail that runs next to Central Road between Ela and Roselle Roads.

I have noticed a little construction in this area for a while now but they have really started making some big changes now.They have knocked down most of the willow trees that you can see  in the (before) photo.

Paul Douglas Trail Construction

Here’ the part of the trail under construction.

I was curious about what was going on (of course) so I asked this construction guy that was carrying a surveyor tool along the trail. This guy was really nice, knowledgeable and took some time to explain to me what is going on.

So here is what is happening:

They are doing some major work on Central Road here, between Ela and Roselle Roads. In the process they are moving the bike trail away from Central Road temporarily (to a little north of where it is now). Once the trail is moved they will be doing the construction on Central and eventually Central will be closed down between Ela and Roselle Roads.

FYI: There will also be a westbound entrance to I90 here when the construction is complete. The guy said that it would be accessible from Central so I assume that it would also be accessible from Roselle (Yay!).

When is this happening:

Well, as I mentioned it has already started. The guy that I talked to said that the temporary bike trail will probably be in place in a few weeks (max). I don’t know exactly when Central will be shut down but he mentioned that that should happen pretty soon this year (2017). I also did not ask about a completion date.

He mentioned that the bike trail will eventually be moved from the temporary location back to running along Central Road again when all is complete. All I could think of regarding that is WHY? I would love to see the trail moved more permanently a little north and further away from Central Road. Well, it sounds like that Is the plan anyway (and I’m sure me whining about that would not make any difference :-)).

A Related Update on the Paul Douglas Trail:

There is also some good news about the PDT trail condition. The area that floods on the west side of the trail, along Huntington/Freeman have been completely dry for weeks now. Not even a puddle.

That’s it for now. Here’s a link to the old photo tour of this part of the trail from way back in 2009 when they just completed this part of the trail:

Paul Douglas Trail along Central – Before the construction

Update: 10/28/2017

Normally I would add a comment for an update but I thought that this was important enough to include in the main post.

PDT Trail CLosed

PDT Trail Closed east of Ela Road

The PDT is now closed where the road construction is going on at Central Road just east of Ela Road.

They have also NOT made the temporary detour path that the construction guy, that I talked to, said they were going to make at this location 🙁

 

Update 11/1/2017 – Weekends and Don’t believe everything you read…

One more update on the construction. First, there is now a sign at Grassy Ridge Meadow Park that says that the trail is closed going east from there. Well, being the rebel, law-breaker that I am and knowing that it is almost all woods from there to Ela Road I decided to check this out.

I could see that there was nothing going on and since I don’t ride that fast I could just stop and turn around if there was something. Well, as of today it is completely clear from the park to Ela Road just like it always has been (it’s just closed after Ela Road).  Maybe they will do something at some point but at this point that sign is totally useless.

The other thing that I just wanted to mention is that although the southern part of the trail is closed east of Ela Road, when I rode the trail on Sunday I discovered that it was open since they were not working then. So on Sundays at least (maybe the weekends) you might still be able to do the entire trail.

Update 8/19/2018 – Paul Douglas Trail Open and Ridable 

Paul DOuglas Trail open

Paul Douglas Trail Ridable east of Ela

As of Saturday, 8/18/2018 the entire Paul Douglas Trail (the loop around Paul Douglas and the golf course) is all pretty much open and ridable.

The reason that I say “pretty much” open  is because the Trail Closed signs and gates are still there but you can easily ride around them.

Central Road is open again (between Ela and Roselle) but the new westbound tollway entrance is not.

The new part of the trail is great even though it is right next to the road again. When you ride east past the new section the trail old trail is not in that good of shape and pretty overgrown but totally ridable. Although the signs and gates are still there, I don’t think that they would close this down again but you never know if they have something else to complete.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (above) the flooded part of the trail (the west side along Huntington-Freeman Road) was pumped out in July and is still dry at this time.

So in Summary: The entire Paul Douglas Trail (the loop) is completely ridable again at this time!

Bike Radar Saved Me Again

What I am actually referring to in the post title is Weather Radar for Biking.

I have written about this subject a few other times in the past and as technology keeps changing but this is such and important tip ~ for those who may not already be aware of it or forget about it at times ~ that I believe it is definitely worth repeating.

Bike Radar for Rides

Weather Radar just after my ride

The best way to check if you are going to get rained on when planning a ride or even when you are on one is simply to check the weather radar just before you ride or on your ride.

As for my story today, I have attached a screen shot of the weather radar ~ from the MyRadar app ~ from my phone from right after my ride. I forgot to check the radar before my ride but was at the point that I could do a 13 mile ride or an 18 mile ride.

It was partly cloudy but I remembered that there was a possibility of rain for today so I decided to check the radar to decide how far to go

I saw a big area of yellow and red what looked like about 45 minutes away. I decided on the 13 mile ride. Then about 15 minutes after I got home it started pouring! The extra 5 miles that I almost took ~ before my radar check ~ would have taken me at least a half hour more. That means at least 15 minutes of riding in pouring rain – Saved by the radar!!!

I am fortunate to have the radar app on my smart phone and I would definitely suggest that for those of you who have smart phones. If you don’t have a smart phone you can still check the radar easily on numerous sites on the internet, but you will have to remember to check before your ride. If you are just not technical or don’t have internet access then there is always the old Weather Channel updates or news if you are able to catch that at the right time.

The weather radar is way more accurate than a typical forecast that just says something like a 40% chance of rain (for example). These forecasts are usually for a much larger geography and it means that it will probably rain within 40% of this area. That could be all in the north and you are in the south (or any other situation) and it does not always tell you when it will come or for how long.

The animated radar lets you see exactly what is happening in your specific local area and you can usually get a pretty good idea about what might happen. If you see yellow or red very near then you will be getting heavy rain. Green and blue are iffy and harder to predict exactly what will happen but it still lets you know that you could get a little rain.

Well that’s it for now, if you are looking for bike accessories see our bike accessory page here for some good online resources.

So Many Trails… So Little Time…

So far this riding season I have ridden 2 trails, or parts of trails, that I have not ridden in many years ~ Elroy Sparta Trail and Des Plaines River Trail (Far Northern End) ~ and 2 trails that I have never ridden before ~ Prospect Heights Trail and Kankakee River Trail ~ in addition to the trails that I ride all of the time, of course.

I usually try to post the Ride Report and Photo Tour pages to this site prior to posting a blog about them but it could be quite a while before I get to all those pages so I decided to post a summary of all of these trails first ~ with a few photo collages to go along with the summary.

Stay tuned though because I will post the Full Ride Reports and Photo Tours of these trails eventually.DPRT and Prospect Height Trail

So getting right to the trails.. We rode the Prospect Height Trail first this year ~ in May.

The Prospect Height Trail is in a convenient location (for many of us) but it is a real contract between Nature and Industrial Sprawl.

Most of the time, I just stick to scenic, natural bike trail photos and try to avoid power lines and other distractions unless I am writing about them specifically (which I do on occasion). In this case, the Power Plant along the trail was so obtrusive, I just had to get some close up photos of that. After all, there are trails with all sorts of “scenery”.

This trail connects to the path around Lake Arlington at the northwest end of the trail. Lake Arlington is nice and scenic but in general it is usually really crowded which makes it difficult to ride and not much fun for the short distance involved.

The next section of trail that we rode, and that I have not been to for years was the northern end of the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) through Van Patton Woods. I have been on the DPRT many times recently ~ it is one of my favorite trails ~ but I rarely make it all the way to the northern end of the trail ~ near the Wisconsin border.

So for this ride we drove the northern trail head off of Russell Road and went south from there through Van Patton Woods (VPW). VPW is very nice but we were actually there on Memorial Day weekend and it was pretty crowded due the nice day and holiday weekend. We rode south on DPRT to just past Gurnee and back. This is a nice ride.Kankakee and Elroy Sparta Trails

Moving on to June, the next trail that I rode, and haven’t been on for years, was the Elroy Sparta Trail (EST) in Wisconsin.

I rode this trail with my brother who wanted to try a recumbent bike which we rented at a Speeds Bike Shop near the trail in Sparta. The people at this bike shop were really nice and the rental was a pretty good deal.

We didn’t ride far on the EST but I suggested that, as long as we were on this trail, we had to see one of the tunnels. So se started our ride near Norwalk, Wis. and rode to Tunnel #3 (in the photos to the left).

This is the longest tunnel on the trail ~ 3,810 feet to be exact ~ and we walked through the tunnel. If you have never been through one of the converted rails-to-trails tunnels on a bike trail, I would suggest going to one to check it out. It is pretty cool (literally cool too) and interesting.

And finally the last new trail that we rode in June, that I had never ridden before, was the Kankakee River Trail (KRT).

This is a really nice trail and there are quite a few different places along the trail where you can park and get on the trail. We got on the trail at the southeast end just southeast of Willmington, Il off of Route 102.

The Kankakee River Trail is not that long ~ about 11 miles one way ~ but it is a very scenic ride. The trail is mostly paved except for about 3 miles on the northwest end of the trail.

Before we rode this trail I read a few articles that people posted about the trail and they talked about the steep hills on the trail which made me a little nervous. I don’t like really steep hills that are so difficult that you end up walking up the hills.

Well, now that I have ridden this trail, I would say that the hills are not that bad. There are some hills but really nothing all that difficult.

Well, as I mentioned above, stay tuned… because I will eventually post all the photos and ride reports on these trails… and the other trails that I will surely be riding this year also!

BTW, You can click on either of the Photo Collages above for a much larger view of the photos.

BTW2, I keep a lot of stats and things in spreadsheets and I have kept my bike mile totals at the end of each year in one of my spreadsheets. I have been riding over 1,000 miles a year ~ and over 2,000 miles a couple of times ~ and my total miles, since I’ve had Bike Computers (from 1997) is now 20,469.

It just goes to show, if you ride a lot and consistently you do rack up lots of miles…

Old Plank Road Trail Ride

We found a really nice south western Chicagoland bike trail this past fall and I am finally getting around to posting the last of the 2015 riding season photos and ride reports. Old Plank Road Trail Arc h in Frankfort

It is looking like 2016 riding season will be here real soon now (with these 60s in February!) so I’ll be busy riding and collecting new photos and trail information soon.

Anyway, as you can see from this blog post title, we rode the Old Plank Road Trail (OPRT) this past fall (in October). We rode a total of 44 miles on the OPRT and on the trail through the Hickory Creek Preserve but we were just a little early for the new trail extension that they just completed that now connects the OPRT with the Thorn Creek Trail (in case you want to add even more miles to your ride on these trails).

This trail is paved and mostly straight (east and west mostly) and flat although if you want a hilly, curvy ride, the trail that goes through the Hickory Creek Preserve will give you that.

I have ridden many more trails north and west of Chicago and in Wisconsin than I have in the southern Chicagoland area but there are some good trails Down South too! I also like exploring new areas too.

So for a very nice trail south and west of Chicago ~ between Joliet and Chicago Heights ~ check out the Old Plank Road Trail.

For the Maps, including the GPS map of our ride and for the photos and ride report, see our new Old Plank Road Trail pages here.

Stay tuned for the New 2016 Trails and Ride Reports coming soon…

Southern Wisconsin Bike Trails ~ Chicagoland Day-Trips

Well now that it is freezing cold here in Chicagoland and not even close to riding weather (for me anyway), I finally got a chance to update our website with the bike trail information and photos from the Southern Wisconsin Bike Trails that we rode this past riding season.

Kenosha Bike Trail, Lake Michigan

A section of the Kenosha Bike Trail along Lake Michigan

I was looking for some new bike trails last year and wanted to find some that were still within day-trip distance from where we live ~ in Chicagoland. I succeeded and found some really nice trails that were not too far and, a few that ran right along Lake Michigan.

Although I had ridden the Kenosha Bike Trail before, I rode some different parts of the trail this past year and also on some of the connecting trails including the Root River Trail and the Racine County Bike Trail.  See the Root River, Racine Trail Pages for details and photos of this ride.

We rode these trails on August 1st (2015) and just happened to be there at the same time as Taste of Wisconsin and the Pike River Rendezvous at Simmons Island Park both in Kenosha on that weekend so that was really quite a fun ride and trip.

In the spring, we rode the White River Bike Trail that runs out of Burlington, Wisconsin. There is one branch of this trail that heads out of Burlington going west and one branch that goes east. We rode both of them for a total of 35 miles. See the White River Trail Pages for the details on this trail.

Later in the fall we rode the Oak Leaf Trail near the town of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I just posted the pages and photos from this ride today. This was a nice 32 mile ride that also included some parts of the path along Lake Michigan.

Oak Leaf Trail at Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan and Milwaukee as seen from the Oak Leaf Trail

The Oak Leaf Trail photo that I’ve included here shows a faint view of the Milwaukee skyline (in the distance and through the mist) from a view of Lake Michigan on the northern part of the trail.

See the Oak Leaf Trail pages for the ride report, photos and details of this trail.

We also took a trip in the other direction (south) and rode the Old Plank Trail out of Mokena, Illinois. This was a much nicer ride than I thought it would be but I do not yet have the details and photos for this ride posted yet… So Stay Tuned!