Category Archives: Bike Trail Photos

Bridge Out McHenry Co. Prairie Trail North of Fox River and FRT

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I was just informed a few days ago that there is a bridge out on the McHenry County Prairie Trail just north of where you cross the Fox River and Route 31 in Algonquin. This is kind of a bummer for those of us who like to ride the northern part of the Fox River Trail then connect to the Prairie Trail and continue north.

Bridge Out Sign on Prairie Trail

Bridge Out Sign on Prairie Trail with Expected Completion Date

It doesn’t look like it would be easy (or maybe not even possible) to cross the tributary where the bridge is out. I was looking at this area on Google Maps and it looks like there could be a way around this but it might be tricky for those of us who are not real familiar with the area and the local roads.

The bridge is supposed to be back around May 1st but there is a lot of good riding time between now and then so I may actually head up there to check this out and see if there is a way around the missing bridge (like the famous Led Zeppelin line “has anyone seen the bridge?!?”)

Anyway, if anyone out there already knows a way around this please post a reply or send me an email.

The photos on this blog post are compliments of Dale Kiffel.

Bridge Out on Prairie Trail

Bridge Out on Prairie Trail

About-Bicycles Page and Blog Posts on Facebook

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About-Bicycles.com is Goin Social!

Yep, I finally launched the About-Bicycles.com business page on Facebook so for the many of you that have subscribed to this blog you now have another way to get our updates and read these blog posts.

The About-Bicycles Facebook Page.

The About-Bicycles Facebook Page.

Here’s a link to the new About-Bicycles Facebook page. This page is new so we really don’t have much content out there just yet, but there will be soon.

Also, if I did the setup correctly, these blog posts should automatically be posted to the About-Bicycles Facebook page so if you choose to Follow About-Bicycles on Facebook, you can get our blog posts right there in Facebook instead of visiting us here on our website ~ of course, you are always welcome to come out here as often as you like too :-).

I have also setup this blog to be tweeted via our Twitter account About_Bicycles.

So come on out to the  About-Bicycles Facebook page and “Like” us and Follow Us! Let’s get social!

Our Free 2012 Bike Calendar in Available – PDF and Excel formats

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I just completed creating the 2012 Bike Calendar from about-bicycles.com. This calendar includes scenic bike trail photos (from Illinois and Wisconsin), cycling events (that are posted for 2012) and is designed to fit each month, with the photo on top and the calendar grid underneath, on one standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper when printed (12 pages total).

2012 Bike Calendar

2012 Bike Calendar

You can find the PDF and Excel versions of the calendar at 2012 Bike Trail and Cycling Events Calendar.

I realize that we now have numerous calendar programs available to us online, on our personal computers and electronic devices and that at many B&M businesses also give you free calendars in different formats.

I have a couple of different calendars that I use (hard-copy and PC versions) but I like having the printed version, with a nice scenic photo and with the holidays and cycling events (as well as my own personal updates) to hang on the wall above my desk, for easy reference, so I use this one also myself (of course!).

The 2012 Bike Calendar Photos

Most of the photos have been contributed by Dale Kiffel who rides a lot of bike trails each year (some with me), has a nice DSLR and has a good eye for scenic photos. Dale has had quite a few photos featured on Brant Miller’s weather photos on our NBC station, has had 3 photos published in the Winnipeg Free Press and has a number of photos on this site. The remaining (3) calendar photos  were taken by me.

I tried to match the photos with the typical weather (Chicago area) for each month as much as possible.

The 2012 Bike Calendar Cycling Events

Since I am more familiar with and more involved in local (Chicagoland area) cycling events, the events on the 2012 Bike Calendar are mostly from the Chicagoland area although there are some cycling events from other parts of the country.

We also have a Cycling Events Page where we post information and links on cycling events.

If you have 2012 cycling events that you would like posted on the calendar or on our cycling events page, please go to the Cycling Events Page and send your information to me via the email address listed on that page.

Customizing the Calendar

The PDF version of the 2012 Bike Calendar is designed to be the easiest to view, download and/or print. You will not be able to modify your copy of this version though unless you have the Adobe software that allows you to modify PDFs (Acrobat).

If you would like to customize the calendar, then the Excel version will be the best choice although this version may be more difficult to use if you are not somewhat proficient with MS Excel. You can customize the Excel version and “Save As” a PDF for a more easy to use version.

400 State Trail Wisconsin, October Ride

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Riding season is not over yet!

As a matter of fact, this is actually a really nice time of year, here in the Chicagoland area (and in Wisconsin), for bike riding.

A friend and I have just returned from an excellent bike ride that we did on the 400 State Trail in Wisconsin. It is pretty much peak season for fall color in this part of Wisconsin so if, by some chance, you are able to plan a ride in the south-western part of Wisconsin (not far from the Dells) I would highly recommend the 400 State Trail.

Both of us took quite a few photos while we were out on the 400 Trail and, as usual, I have uploaded all of our photos, selected and formatted the best and most relavant bike trail photos and have posted a full Bike Trail Article (with photo pages) on this site for this trail.

The new Bike Trail information  and photos can be found on our New 400 State Trail Pages. A view of a rock formation and lake along the 400 State Trail

I have actually been wanting to ride this trail for years now since I had already ridden (and photographed) the Elroy-Sparta Trail and my friend has contributed bike trail articles and photos of the other 2 bike trails, the Lacrosse River Trail and the Great River Trail that make up this series of connecting bike trails (referred to as Bike 4 Trails, in Wisconsin).

The 4 connecting trails go from Reedsburg, Wisconsin (on the south east end) to the Mississippi River (around Lacrosse, Wis) and north along the Mississippi to just past Trempealeu Wisconsin for a total of 101 miles (one way)!

For our trip, we just did an easy ride on the 400 State Trail from Reedsburg to Elroy and back for a total of 44 miles. Although we just did the 400 Trail on this trip, I now have complete trail pages and photos for all 4 of these bike trails on this site. If you check out the new 400 State Trail Article, there are links to the 3 other connecting trails on the main trail page.

It has actually taken me WAY longer than I thought it would to select and format all of the photos (I selected 49) and web pages for the trail article. I have been using almost the same format for my bike trail pages as I used when I first started this bike site and it is very time consuming.

Plenty of fall color on the 400 State Trail in Wisconsin

The good side to using the same format is that all of the trail articles and photo pages are consistent. The bad side is that it is cumbersome to use this format and there are probably newer and nicer formats out there. Well, at some point I will transition to a new format but for now, I hope you still enjoy the trail and photo formats that we’ve been using for years now.

So don’t give up on riding season yet! There is still some good weather and excellent rides to be taken!

River Bend, Randall Road and Great Western Trail Ride

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Yesterday, a friend and I went out and explored some new bike trails (which also connected to some bike trails that we had already ridden before) and had a really nice 35 mile ride.

I originally wanted to check out the Randall Road Bike Trail but it is actually a pretty short trail (4 miles) but what we discovered is that this is an excellent way to ride from the Fox River Trail to the Great Western Trail!

The other trail involved in getting from the FRT to the GWT is the River Bend Trail which is also known as the Silver Glen Trail. It is a little confusing since I have seen this trail referred to with 2 different names so I just referred to both names so people can find the info on it using either name.

River Bend / Silver Glen Bike Trail

The bridge over Randall Road on the River Bend (Silver Glen) Bike Trail

If you start on the Fox River Trail just before the long bridges in South Elgin, you’ll see a sign for the “Randall & Silver Glen Trails“. This is the River Bend Trail (as it is called on the map in the forest preserve that you go through).   Some of this bike trail goes along Silver Glen Road so I believe that is how the SGT name came about.

Anyway, if you get on the River Bend Trail from the Fox River Trail, you can follow the trail all the way to Randall Road. At Randall Road you can get on the north end of the Randall Road Trail which you can then take south the the Great Western Trail.

We connected to the GWT, as described above, and then took the GWT to Virgil, Illinois where we turned around and went back. I actually put together some bike trail pages, with photos for the River Bend Trail HERE.

The River Bend Trail is nice as you go through the John J Duerr Forest Preserve and if you take it through the wetland area west of Randall Road but the part that goes along Silver Glen Road is not that exciting.

Randall Road Bike Trail

A view of the northern end of the Randall Road Trail from the corn field

The Randall Road Trail is not very exciting either when you first get on at the northern end of the trail (at Silver Glen & Randall) but once you go over the long bridge (that runs parallel to Randall Road), it goes into a nice forest preserve area, followed by a real nice prairie and then you connect to the Great Western Trail (which I have always enjoyed).

There was no construction or detours on any of the trails that I have mentioned above and overall it was a really nice ride.

Bike Trails, Photos and Magazine Article in Competitor Magazine

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Competitor Magazine May 2011

Competitor Magazine May 2011 - Cover Photo Competitor Group, Inc.

First off, I want to thank all of you out there that have visited the bike trail pages on this site and have made these pages and photos so popular (Google knows about this stuff, of course). The bike trail pages (Chicago area) get a very large amount of website traffic.

Busse Woods Bike Trail

Busse Woods Photo in May 2011 issue of Competitor magazine

Next, I wanted to mention that I had another bike trail photo posted in another hard copy magazine. I believe that this is a national magazine and it is distributed at sports shops, running stores and cycling stores.

The magazine is called Competitor and the photo from this site was published in the May 2011 issue with an article about Busse Woods on page 68. The Busse Woods Photo that was published is on the right and you can see the Busse Woods Bike Trail page and Photos here.

Unfortunately, I did not have my original digital copies of the photos of this trail when the writer asked for them so I had to send them the smaller versions that I had posted on the website. When they published the article they only included one photo and it was very small. I joked with friends how you would need a magnifying glass to see it. OK, it wasn’t really that small, but I really wish that I had the original digital copy!

After this article I was trying to remember the other bike trail articles and photos that were published in hard copy magazines and decided to put together a list for future reference. Here are the magazine articles published from this site (so far):

  • Competitor Magazine – May 2011 issue, Small photo only of Busse Woods
  • Way of the Wilds – Autumn 2010 Issue, An article about biking the Fox River Trail North – Edited and called “Places to Play” – got us a visit to Bill Kurtis’ House! (There is another blog entry about this one also).
  • Family Time Magazine June 2010 issue An article that I interviewed for for a local freebie magazine. “Bicycling, Just You and Your Family”
  • North Shore Magazine – June 2007 issue, Photo only – Green bay Trail

Oh yea, another fellow cyclist, Dale Kiffel,  who has contributed articles and quite a few photos to this site, has also gotten quite popular on our local weather channel (NBC (channel 5) in Chicago) and has had his 3 nature photos selected and broadcast with the weather segment of the NBC news in Chicago.

So I hope you enjoy the articles out here and even our (getting more popular) photos!

2011 Bike Trail Calendar and Free Calendar Generator

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I am a little late on this, since we are already into the 9th day of the new year, but I needed a new wall calendar at home and I usually generate my own each year.

For 2011 I have generated a Bike Trails and Events Calendar, in PDF and Excel formats that I am offering on this site for free. I just finished the web page with the Excel and PDF Bike Calendar Links.

See  Bike Trail and Events Calendar for a PDF or Excel copy of the calendar. Both versions of the calendar include 1 page per month. The calendar includes the standard US holidays for each month and a Bike Trail photo on top (or you can choose the pre-made generic calendar with no bike trail photo).

Since I am so late on this, I have only included 1 Chicago bike trail event (so far) which is the Bike The Drive event. I will probably add events to this calendar through out the year so if you know of events that would fit this format, please send the event and date to me.

In addition to the pre-made calendars (with bike trail photos (Illinois and Wisconsin)) and the generic calendar (no photos), I am also offering the Calendar Generator program which is an Excel VBA program that allows you to generate a calendar (with or without photos) for any year that you select, with standard US holidays and customized events that you can enter yourself.

The PDF version is probably the easiest version. The Excel (no macro) version is a little more complicated but allows more customization (you can replace the photos with your own) and the Excel VBA Calendar Generator version is the most complex but allows the most flexibility.

I don’t want to make it sound like any of these are that complex or difficult to use but there are quite a few people out there with many levels of PC expertise. I’ve tried to keep options available from very simple to more complex and powerful.

Well, if you are in need of a 2011 calendar, I hope that some of you find the calendars and programs offered here to be helpful.

Now we can at least have some bike trail photos on the calendar to remind us of riding season all year long even when we can’t be out there on the trails! Have fun!

Once again the link for the calendar programs is: Bike Trail and Events Calendar

Daisies Along the Bike Trail Photos.

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This should probably just fall under the “just my rides” post but I wanted to include one of my photos here and I can’t do that (easily) in a reply.

Daisies Along the Paul Douglas Bike Trail

Daisies Along the Paul Douglas Bike Trail

Anyway, it’s a beautiful spring day here today in Chicagoland and I just took a really nice ride with a friend (mostly in Inverness) and on the way back home I managed to get some photos of some of the many daisies along side of the Paul Douglas Bike Trail.  

I had noticed that there were quite a few daisies along the trail and wanted to play flower photographer on some nice day. Well, I guess today was the day!

I am only an average photographer (even though I really like photography) but I did get a few nice photos. My biggest regret is that I didn’t get my photos before they groomed the trail and mowed down all the daisies that were within 2 or 3 feet of the trail.

It really looked cool when the daisies  came right up to the trail. I am glad that they keep the trail maintained but I wish that I would have gotten the photos before they mowed.

We can’t always “stop to smell the roses” but maybe we can “ride and enjoy the daisies”.

Anyway, here is the Paul Douglas Bike Trail Daisy Photo Page that I just posted if you are interested in checking it out. I also created a link to this page from the main Paul Douglas Bike Trail page (I originally called this the Algonquin Road Trail before the main Paul Douglas part of the trail was complete).