Millennium Trail Connection to North Shore Bike Path

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Rob

I have ridden most parts of the Millennium Trail (MT) and the North Shore Bike Path (NSBP) in the past but had never ridden the far eastern part of the MT or the far western part of the NSBP and since both parts of these trails run parallel to Route 176 I was curious if the 2 trails connected to each other.

First, I researched this on Google Maps, which is a great way to check out trail connections or new trails and new bike routes. You can start out with Map View and zoom in to where you are planning your ride then check out the actual terrain with Satellite View or zoom in further for the Street View if it is available. Google does not have all of the smaller trails listed in their mapped areas but they do have most of the longer trails.

Anyway, I found that the 2 trails do NOT connect directly to each other but you can take the MT east to Midlothian Road then ride alongside Hawley Street on the sidewalks (or on the street if you don’t mind riding in traffic) to get to the NSBP at Carmel Catholic HS.

You can get a good idea about the routes on Google Maps but I wanted to see what it was like first hand so I headed out to the Country Bumpkin Nursery ~ at Gilmer Road and 176, which is where I wanted to start my trip east ~ to check it out this trail connection.

My experience on this ride was that the eastern part of the MT was not all that great but it was paved and straight so you could go fairly fast if you like, the trip through Mundelein on the sidewalks pretty much sucked and the western part of the NSBP was actually pretty nice.

I also did a short ride on the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) when I got to it from the NSBP. The DPRT is actually one of my favorite trails in the area.

So in addition to this blog post, I wrote up the details on this ride along with photos and the GPS Maps of the rides on the following pages: Millennium Trail Connection to North Shore Bike Path and the NSBP West End Photo Page.

So many trails… so little time…

Virgil Gilman Trail Ride

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Rob

Last week a friend and I packed up our bikes and cameras and made it out to another bike trail that neither one of us had ridden before. This was the Virgil Gilman Trail (VGT) that runs northeast from Aurora to Waubonsee College in Sugar Grove.

The Bridge over Galena Avenue on the Virgil Gilman Trail

I had ridden past this trail a few other times when I was on the southern end of the Fox River Trail (FRT) but never had a chance to check out the entire trail. For this trip we actually started on the Fox River Trail in Oswego then headed north to the Virgil Gilman Trail which is about 5 miles from Oswego on the trail. This gave us a little less than a 40 mile ride ~ round trip ~ which is pretty good for these shorter days.

I was hoping to catch some good fall colors out on this trail, since it has some nice wooded areas, but the trees had not really started to show their colors yet this year ~ in this location anyway. Even without the full fall colors we were still able to find enough nice scenery and photo ops for a good photo tour of this trail.

See: The Virgil Gilman Trail ride report and photo tour for more information on the trail and for the photos from this ride.

I liked the northwestern part of this trail the best (west of Aurora). This part of the trail was very wooded with tall trees in some parts and also had some interesting looking bridges I thought.

The northwestern end of the trail is at Waubonsee Community College which was a nice place for a break before we turned around and headed back. On a lot of the other trails that I have been on the best place for a break is sometimes an opening in the woods or if you are lucky you can find a bench or picnic table.

It would have been nice to ride the Fox River Trail north of Aurora on this ride too but there is only so much daylight these days and you need to get through Aurora to hook up with the northern part of the FRT.

I have included a lot more information on this trail on the VGT trail page on this website and in the photo pages so check out the Virgil Gilman Trail Pages here when you get a chance.

Badger State Trail Ride and Photos

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Rob

I had planned to ride the Badger State Trail in Wisconsin since spring of this year but was unable to get out to this trail until last week. Well, I finally rode the trail from Monroe, Wisconsin, through the tunnel and into Belleville.

Badger State Trail, Rock wall and bridge

Rock Wall and Bridge on the Badger State Trail

I had originally ridden the southern part of this trail a few years back when a friend and I rode the Jane Addams Trail which runs from Freeport to the Illinois/Wisconsin border and then connects to the Badger State Trail. We rode the JAT from Freeport, Il to Monroe, Wi on that trip so I continued my ride this year heading north from Monroe, Wi.

The Badger State Trail (BST) is a nice, scenic, rural Wisconsin trail but the highlight of this trail is definitely the 1/4 Mile Long Tunnel which is located about 4 miles south of Belleville.

Looking out of the southern entrance of the tunnel.

I took quite a few photos, as usual, to document the trail and give you a feel for what it is like, but I probably took more photos of the tunnel since that is the more unique features of this trail.

The only other trail that I have ridden with tunnels like this is the Elroy-Sparta Trail, which has 3 tunnels. The Tunnel on the BST is more like Tunnel #3 on the EST (which is the one that is closest to Sparta) since both of these tunnels are fairly long and you can’t see the exits at either end when you are in the middle of either tunnel.

You will need a light with you to pass through the tunnel (or at least a stick like a blind person would use, but I would recommend a light). I had a bike light with me although I did not have the handlebar clip attached so I had to hold it as I rode.

When I passed through the tunnel there was a young family passing through also and they all had helmet lights on (like coal miners on bikes!). Later on there was a guy that came through the tunnel using the flashlight app on his iPhone. I tried that on my way back but it was not a good as my bike light.

I actually ended up taking more photos from inside the tunnel, looking out, rather than outside the tunnel. This can be a little tricky due to the light (or lack of light) but it can also produce some fairly unique situations and photos.

Of course, I have uploaded a batch of the photos that I took on my ride and have documented the trail and my specific ride on the Badger State Trail.

Check out The Badger State Trail Photos and Ride Report HERE.

I have also included the GPS Map and data from my bike computer on these pages.

Intense Color Bike Trail and Nature Photos

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Rob

I’ve been taking bike trail photos ~ and writing the corresponding bike trail articles ~ for this website ~ for about 10 years now. My original photos were actually pretty lame (in retrospect) but since this is something that I really love to do, I kept working at it, upgraded my photo equipment and improved a lot over time (I think anyway).

I have also had photo contributions to this site from other cyclists and photographers, most notably Dale Kiffel who has contributed some very high quality bike trail and nature photos to this website ~ like the (color enhanced) spider web photo ~ from the Des Plaines River Trail ~ on the left.

Like most other photographers these days, I have also used Photoshop and other photo editing programs to enhance the original photos. In the past I had mostly used the photo editing programs for some minor cropping or other very limited changes.

These days I have noticed that quite a few photographers, at various levels, use photo editing programs pretty extensively and many of the most dramatic photos that I see out on the internet look like they have had the colors enhanced. In some cases it’s just a touch other times it is quite extensive.

Of course, it is best to get everything right in the camera prior to taking the photo and not have to depend on photo editing programs but even when you do get a really good photo you can sometimes make it even better in the lab (as I call it).

Last summer I got my first DSLR camera and have been working on getting much higher quality photos for this website. I believe that I have improved quite a bit and I have found that, in some cases, enhancing the colors on the bike trail and nature photos can improve the photos quite a bit although you still need to start with good photos to begin with.

In the past, I have usually used the color enhancements very conservatively (and I usually mention this with the photo article) just to make the photos stand out a little more and to be a little more interesting.

Recently, I have seen some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos in addition to some just heavily edited photos out on the Internet that were very striking. So I decided to try this with some of the bike trail and nature photos that I have in my collection and/or have posted out on this website.

So you can find our collection of Intense Color Trails and Nature Photos here.

Most of these photos have been posted previously on this website under the corresponding Bike Trail Pages. The selection that I used includes some of the best and most colorful photos posted in 2011 and 2012.

I’ve used varying degrees of color saturation for this collection of photos. In some cases the saturation is not that high in other cases the enhanced photo looks almost cartoon like (like the second photo on the first photo page).

As I was working on the color enhanced photos it reminded me of that old SNL skit where Christopher Walken kept trying to get MORE COWBELL on the Blue Oyster Cult song. I kept wanting MORE COLOR! (I hope I got better results than they did with the Cowbell on the BOC song though 🙂 ).

So now that I have these Extreme Color photos posted, I’ll check and see how you all like them by the internet traffic to these pages and the “Likes”, “Tweets”, etc. that we get. If I see that these photo pages are popular then I’ll probably some color enhanced collections for the future trail pages that I post.

Note: I have social media buttons at the bottom of each page on this website so if you like these photos please add a “Like” or a “Tweet” etc. at the bottom of the Intense Color Photo Pages.

Thanks, Rob.

Road Bike Rider in the Snow and Photo Stuff

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Rob

I just wanted to mention an unusual kind of thing that I saw this weekend when I was out on the bike trail behind my house working on a Photoshop project that I wanted to try for my personal FB profile picture (also an unusual kind of thing).

I was out on the bike trail with my camera, a mirror and a tri-pod in order to get this in-camera-lens photo that I tried one other time on a birthday card. Fortunately there was no one else out there because of all of the snow on the trail since I think my situation would have looked pretty quirky to anyone else that might have been there.

Well, I shouldn’t say no one else was out there because after I finished my photo project and as I was packing up my stuff this cyclist on a road bike rode by! There was a good few inches of snow on the trail and this guy was on a road bike with very skinny tires (and was managing to stay vertical).

As this cyclist was riding by I said “wow, in the snow?”. All he said was “this wasn’t planned“. I have no idea what that meant or how he could have been on his bike on a bike trail and it not being planned but that’s what he said.

As he was riding off into the distance I realized that I had my camera right there and that this is something I should have a photo of. So I got a photo of this rider as he was going up a fairly steep hill on this trail.

The photo that I have included above uses the “in-camera-lens” effect that I was working on out on the trail and the photo of the bike rider (within the camera lens). I’ve included the larger blowup of this photo so you can see it better if you click on the photo.

Well, I completed the Photochopping for my FB profile picture, uploaded that and I got quite a few comments and likes on the photo effect (even though it had a picture of me in it too 🙂 ).

I don’t want to overuse this effect but I think that I am going to update the About-Bicycles Facebook page to use something like this too soon.

BTW: if you do a LIKE on our FB page (the link above) then you will also get notifications when there are updates to this blog since I have it set to update the FB page whenever I do a blog post here. Or you could even read the blog posts out on FB if you prefer.

If you would like to know how this is done in Photoshop (it’s not difficult) just post a reply here or send me an email and I’ll give you the details.

2013 Bike Trail and Cycling Events Calendar

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Rob

I’ve just completed putting together the 2013 Bike Trail and Cycling Events Calendar and have also updated our Cycling Events Page with the 2013 dates for many major cycling events and rides in the Chicagoland area and Midwest in general.

I just discovered that many people start looking for the next year’s calendar right after Thanksgiving so I hope I’m not too late in getting this together. I know there will still be people looking for a 2013 Calendar through out December and especially just before and after New Years Day.

This calendar is available in PDF and Excel formats and is designed so that each month will fit on one standard ~ 8.5″x11″ ~ size sheet of paper.

I think that the PDF and Excel formats give you a lot of flexibility with viewing online, downloading and viewing on your computer or other devices or to print (one month at a time or all 12 months at once) if you would like a hardcopy.

Personally, I like to have a hardcopy version of the calendar that I hang on my wall. You may not get the same quality, depending on your printing capabilities, as you would with a store bought calendar but there are some nice bike trail and cycling related photos and the calendar includes US holidays and cycling events in the Midwest in the body of the calendar.

You can use this calendar for quick references, for easily printing a specific month on a standard size sheet of paper or you can print all 12 months in high quality, on fancy paper and bind together in a variety of ways. That part is completely up to you. I am just trying to provide an handy and easy to use calendar (related to cycling of course).

The photos on this years calendar were all taken this year and include photos from bike trails in the Chicagoland area and the Midwest and cycling events in our area such as the MB Financial Bike the Drive (on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago) and the Tour or Elk Grove professional bike racing event.

You can find more information and the 2013 cycling calendars on the 2013 Bike Trails and Events Calendar Page here.

I have also spent some time looking up the dates for many of the major cycling rides and events in our area and have included the 2013 dates and links to the websites that sponsor these events on our Special Cycling Events Page.

Well, here’s to a Happy 2013 and a lot of enjoyable cycling miles and activities!

I&M Trail from Marseilles to Split Rock (near La Salle)

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Rob

As I mentioned recently, we just rode another part of the I&M Canal Trail last week (Monday, 10/15/12) and I have selected and posted photos of our trip with our existing bike trail pages.

This particular ride was a continuation of a ride on the I&M (Illinois and Michigan) Canal Trail that we did way back in 2003 from Channahon to Marseilles. The photos for this trip should be much better quality since the old photos were actually from a pre-2003 generation camcorder and the new photos are from our fairly current DSLR cameras.

These trail photos are more like my usual photo tours of the other bike trails written up on this site, where I provide more information on the trails and try to capture the feel of the entire ride, rather than the photos that I did recently that were specifically meant to capture the fall colors on the bike trails that I selected for this year (although there were still some nice fall colors on this I&M Trail ride).

We did a little over 40 miles on this ride and once again I was impressed with many parts of the I&M Canal Bike Trail. This is a fairly rugged (if you are used to asphalt) multi-surface trail. Most of the trail was crushed stone but there were also some grass and dirt sections. We had to clear and/or carry our bikes over some fallen trees on one part of this ride.

After our first ride on the I&M Trail I did some research on the history of the I&M trail (both online and at the library) and I have been very impressed with the significance of the history behind this trail (once the Illinois and Michigan Canal that connected Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River and shaped the history of Chicago and the mid-west US).

On this trip we rode past the Fox River Aqueduct and Locks #11 and #12 just west of Ottawa, Il. There are quite a few signs and maps posted along the trail that give you some of the history of the part of the trail that you are on. so not only is this a nice, scenic bike ride, you can also pickup some interesting history on this ride.

The I&M Trail goes right past Buffalo State Park which seemed like a nice area but we did not get a chance to go into the park. The trail is also just north of Starved Rock State Park but I did not see a way to get to Starved Rock from the I&M Trail. This is probably possible but we had a limited amount of time (there is only so much daylight this time of year) and we were not able to explore as much as I would have liked to.

OK, enough talk about the I&M Canal and our ride. Here are the latest photos from our ride from Marseilles to Split Rock (7 photo pages):

Actually, you can just take the links at the bottom of each photo page to go to the next one, but I am including all of them here in case you are interested in a particular part of the trail.

Millennium Trail Fall Photos

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Rob

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.

Fall Colors and Bike Trails ~ Des Plaines River and North Branch Trails

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Rob

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) :-).

The Illinois Great River Trail Description, Info and Photos

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Rob

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!

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