I finally made it out to the Fox River Trail (FRT), north of Elgin and the McHenry County Prairie Trail (MCPT) heading north to the Lake in the Hills Airport. This is my first ride on these trails this year and I almost forgot how nice the trails are. I managed to ride about 28 miles on the 2 trails on Thursday.

Prairie Trail construction in Algonquin

There is one important thing to know about which is that there is a Detour going through Algonquin (heading south from Express 31 and the Towne Park). I spaced out and missed the big orange detour signs and thought that I was going to have to pack up my bike and drive around the construction.

If you do pay attention to the detour signs though (unlike myself 🙂 ) the detour through Algonquin is well marked, on easy, bike friendly streets and is not very long so I would not let that stop you from doing this part of these trails.

The photo that I have included here shows where the trail is torn up just south of Towne Park. Not a very scenic bike trail photo (like I prefer to include in these posts) but it is newsworthy I think.

So aside from that little blip in the trail in Algonquin, the rest of the trail, between Elgin in the south to Lake in the Hills Airport (near Crystal Lake) in the north was in great shape and is a really nice ride.

I also wanted to include my GPS maps of the rides to make it a little easier to see exactly where I am talking about (visually on a map). This was just 1 ride but because of my little confusion at the detour I reset the trip meter so there are 2 GPS maps.

Here is the First GPS Map from Algonquin to the Lake in the Hills Airport and back and here is the Second GPS Map from Algonquin to Elgin and back.

Even though it was a mistake on my part to reset my GPS in Algonquin, I actually found that I liked having the 2 parts of the trail ride in separate maps. It gives you the miles and stuff for each section and I think it makes it easier to view in some ways. I may do that more often (but on purpose! 🙂 )

Note that although I usually refer to the McHenry County Prairie Trail simply as the Prairie Trail, that can get confusing since there are numerous “Prairie Trails” in Illinois (probably in other states too).

I just call it the Prairie Trail on the trails page sidebar links on this site so if you are looking for detailed information and first hand ride reports on numerous trails in this area be sure to check out The Trails Pages on this website. 🙂