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.

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.

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…