About Bicycles Online > Bicycle Touring and Trails > Root River, Racine Trails

The Root River and Racine County Bike Trails

There are a series of connecting bike trails in southern Wisconsin that you can ride from Racine to Kenosha, along the Lake Michigan shoreline and all the way to the Illinois/Wisconsin border including the Root River Pathway, the Racine County Trail, the Kenosha County Trail and the Pike Bike Trail.

Here is one of the bike path bridges over the Root River as seen from the Root River Trail.

The Racine County Bike Trail is paved, straight, flat and lined with trees in many parts of the trail.

These trails connect to the bike paths that go out to the Lake Michigan shoreline in Kenosha.

This article includes the 4 bike trails mentioned above that run between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin and along the Lake Michigan shoreline in places. You can do a 30 mile round trip ride on these trails as we did on the ride featured in this article.

You can also continue south on the Kenosha County Bike trail to go into Illinois and connect to the Robert McClory Bike Trail. You can take the links to the 2 trails above for more information on the southern part of the Kenosha Trail and the trails that go into Illinois.

The trails on these bike routes between Racine and Kenosha are paved and the routes between the trails are on easy, bike friendly side streets.

Our Ride(s) on the Root River Pathway and Connecting Trails

I originally discovered the Kenosha County Trail (KCT) at the northern end of one of my rides on the Green Bay and Robert McClory bike trails. I came back and rode the southern part of the Kenosha Bike Trail from the Illinois border into Kenosha back in July of 2010.

Later, I discovered that the Kenosha County Trail continued north out of Kenosha and connected to the Racine County Trail and the Root River Pathway. In August (of 2015) I finally got the opportunity to ride the northern part of the Kenosha Trail and also the Racine County  Trail and Root River Pathway. I also brought my camera to document the ride, of course.

I randomly chose August 1st for this ride and started the ride in Kenosha. I actually did not know that we were going there while they were having the Taste of Wisconsin and the Pike River Rendezvous at Simmons Island Park both in Kenosha on that weekend. 

This worked out great for us since after our 30 mile ride we packed the bikes into the van and walked over to the Taste of Wisconsin for our after-ride meal!

My favorite parts of this ride were the stretches along Lake Michigan, mostly on the Pike Trail, and the Racine County Bike Trail. 

The Root River Pathway was nice but it consisted of a combination of smaller sections of trails and side streets that connect the trails and the northern part of the Kenosha County Trail was not very scenic although it was a nice easy, casual ride.

 

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The Root River and Racine Trail Maps

I have found that I really prefer doing a lot of my bike trail research on Google Maps these days, then when I select my trails I do some additional research on other sites that have info on the specific trails (like here! :-) ).

When you use Google Maps there is an option to select "Bicycling" to show bike trails and routes in a selected area. When you zoom way in you'll get the names of the trails and if you are curious about the roads in the area, you can usually get a street view too!

So here is a link to the Root River and Racine Trails via Google Maps. That should get you to the general area and you can zoom in or out for your own specific needs. There is also a nice little PDF map of Pike Bike Trail in Kenosha here.

If you want to see our specific bike ride for this trip mapped out from my bike GPS unit , here's the GPS MAP of our Root River, Racine and Kenosha ride.

There is one little detour that we took out to Carthage College that you will see at the beginning of the ride.

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Root River Pathway Racine County Trail Photo Tour

Here's the photo tour of the Root River and Racine Trails from the Root River Pathway in Racine, to the Racine County Trail, the Kenosha County trail, the Pike Bike trail on Lake Michigan and into the town of Kenosha Wisconsin. This ride was from August 2015.

Root River and Racine Bike Trails < you are here

RRR Photos 1 - Lincoln Park to 12th St, Racine
RRR Photos 2 - Racine County Trail to Kenosha Trail
RRR Photos 3 - Kenosha Trail to Lake Michigan
RRR Photos 4 - Pike Trail, Lake Michigan and Kenosha

See the Kenosha County Bike Trail article on this site for more information on this trail from Kenosha to the Illinois/Wisconsin state line.