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

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 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!