Virgil Gilman Trail Ride

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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.

Bridge on Virgil Gilman Trail

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.