Since we are right in the middle of prime bike riding season, I wanted to pass along some helpful information about checking out bike trails for those of you who may not have already discovered these methods.

Many of us bike trail riders already know some good resources on the internet or are pretty good at finding basic bike trail information (like trail distances, surfaces, trail heads, maps, etc.) through the general search engines.

Once you have found a trail that you would like to ride and ready to go to the next level, I have found that checking out the trail with the satellite and aerial options that are available through sites like Mapquest or Trails.com or with Google Earth can be very helpful (I believe that there may even be more sites with these options now, but these are the ones that I am most familiar with).

There is no shortage of websites that have the basic bike trail information for popular trails (although many of the smaller or out of the way trails are often overlooked) and this website has some good first hand trail information, photos and now even videos of bike trails in the Chicagoland area  (as well as some in Wisconsin and other places) and you will probably want to check out this info for new trails that you are considering or new sections or branches of trails that you may have already been on.

If you are planning a fairly long bike trail ride or really want to check into the surrounding terrian then the satellite images really come in handy. I prefer the sites that add street names when you zoom in to the area that you are interested in.

Printed bike trail maps are great and are a good starting point and it’s nice to keep them with you on a long ride or on a ride in an unfamiliar area. I have found it best to scan a copy of my favorite map and just keep the 8×10 copy with me on my bike because then I don’t have to fold my map to the right area and wear out my map on every ride.

So the printed maps are definately beneficial but there is just way too much information that is not available on the printed maps that can be very obvious with the satellite/aerial images. It takes a little time to research, but once you have zeroed in on the trail that you are planning to ride and have zoomed in to the levels that you like, this option will give you a lot of great information before (or after) exploring new bike trails.

Well, I hope you have found this little update helpful. Enjoy those new trails and your rides!