Finally, the weather has warmed up! Saturday's high was in the mid-70s, so we took the bikes out for another trail ride. This time we went to the Des Plaines River Trail, which is one of my favorites. Somehow I never rode on it last year, so I made a point of getting to it first thing this season. It's a bit of a drive, about 35 minutes, but it has some of the best scenery of the trails I've been on.
It starts near the Wisconsin-Illinois border and follows the Des Plaines River for 30 miles south, almost to Chicago. I've only ever ridden along the northern half. A really nice feature of the trail is that even though it crosses several major roads, it has lots of underpasses so you never have to fight traffic to get across. The only downside is that those underpasses are right next to the river, so when we've gotten a lot of rain, they are sometimes closed due to flooding. Fortunately, you can check the status of each underpass online.
We haven't had much rain this spring (which is about to change this week, and was another reason I wanted to ride this trail now), so all the underpasses on our ride were open. The pictures above are pretty good, but don't quite do the trail justice. Once everything has fully bloomed, it's beautiful.
It was a fun 10-mile ride. On our way back we stopped to watch a huge bird, which we later decided was a turkey vulture.
As an encore, today I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. And now I am exhausted.
Distance: 10.03 miles
Riding Time: 1 hour, 6 minutes
Season Total: 20.7 miles