It’s been a while since I have updated this blog with bike trail conditions and recently I became more aware of how important that is since I have not found a centralized website with really good and up to date bike trail conditions (preferably from riders).
I am going to post an update here for the 3 trails mentioned in the Blog Title: The Busse Woods Trail, the Old Plank Road Trail and the Green Bay Trail. I have ridden all of these trails in June of this year (2019). So these updates are pretty recent and I am getting the trail conditions updates in before the July 4th weekend :-).
OK, first of all the reason that I am including these 3 trails together in one post because these are the easiest trails to update! Why? Well because there are no problems or detours on any of these trails (in the sections that I have ridden) and these trails do not typically have too many issues anyway.
As for the sections of these trails that I have ridden (this year, 2019), I am including links to my Garmin GPS maps of each my rides, in addition to a brief description of the sections that I have ridden.
On the Busse Woods Trail, I have ridden the entire 7.3 mile Red Loop (BTW: this is a really beautiful ride (but it gets really crowded so it is best to go at off times)). The Purple section (including a side trip to the bridge over 53/290) and the Black section that goes out to Golf Road. My ride was a little over 15 miles and this is all paved. Here is the Garmin GPS map of my latest ride there: My Busse Woods Ride on Garmin website. As I mentioned above there are no issues with this trail.
As for the Old Plank Road Trail, I have ridden from New Lenox to Chicago Heights (36 miles both ways and all paved). Here is the Garmin GPS map of my latest ride: My Old Plank Road Trail Ride on Garmin website. Also no issues with this trail.
And finally (for this post), The Green Bay Trail. I have ridden this trail from Highland Park to Wilmette and then out to Gillson Beach on Lake Michigan back in early June (22 miles and mostly crushed stone). There were some puddles and wet spots on parts of this trail but nothing that would be a problem. Here is my Garmin GPS map of this ride: My Green Bay Trail Ride on Garmin website.
I realized that even the updates that I post here are helpful since it can be difficult to get trail condition updates on the internet. I have not found a centralized source (website) that has really good up to date conditions. I was recently looking for updates for a website visitor that sent me an email looking for updates on the Jane Adams Trail and the Badger State Trail. I have ridden both of these trails but not recently so I could not help a lot.
I was also looking for updates on the Military Ridge Trail in Wisconsin and I did find that the State of Wisconsin had some pretty good updates on their state trails but I was not sure exactly how current they were.
Coming up next: I will be posting trail condition updates for the Fox River Trail and the Paul Douglas Trail. I should probably do these blog posts periodically, as I ride the trails, rather than all at once but I got a little behind and still wanted to get this information out here.
By the way, if you are looking for more details on any of the trails mentioned in this post, you can search this blog or just go to the Bike Trails Page on this website for a lot of details and photos of the trails.