It was a beautiful day yesterday so I got out to the Algonquin Road / Paul Douglas Crabtree bike trail and got photos of the new section (around Paul Douglas Forest Preserve) and got videos of most of the trail.

First of all I just did a quick update on the Algonquin Road trail page on the flooding problems. As of yesterday, there was no flooding. I didn’t see where they did any improvements so I think that it just dried up and could flood again the next time that we get wet conditions.

I also just discovered that they added another 1.2 mile extension to the other end of the trail! At the western end of the bike trail (where it used to end at Penny Road) it now goes through the forest preserve north to Dundee Road and ends at the Crabtree Nature Center (which, unfortunately has a “no bikes” allowed sign).

I have been wanting to get photos of the new section of trail around the Paul Douglas Forest Preserve and managed to get quite a few pictures yesterday. This part of the trail is still brand new (as of last year) so the grass hasn’t even come in completely yet. I also got photos of the new section of the trail from Penny Road to the Crabtree Nature center.

I have not had a chance to review the photos (and video) and format the web pages yet but I hope to get to that fairly soon and update the ART trail page.

As I’ve written in other blog posts, that I have been wanting to get some bike trail videos up on the website to enhance the bike trail photo sections. Since this trail is the closest bike trail to where I live, I started with this one.

I learned a couple of biking photo/video lessons yesterday. First of all, I was trying to do the photos and bike trail video at the same time. This did not work out well at all. It is already a little difficult to do bike trail photos or videos while riding (or stopping periodically) but to try to do both at the same time was just way too much!

I also had a camera and camcorder strapped to me. This does not work out all that well either. I am going to check into either getting still photos from the camcorder or videos from the digital camera or I’ll just make separate trips (when possible) for photos and videos.

At any rate, I did get both photos and a video of the bike trail. I am hoping that I got some good shots but I think that the quality of both the photos and video might not be as good as it could have been if I had just focused on photos or the video seperately.

I should be able to get the photos posted fairly soon but the website bike trail video production is new for me so that will take a little more time. I will be getting to these photo and video updates ASAP though!