The Des Plaines River Trail Photos
to Dam No 1, Wheeling

This is coming up to the rusty old bridge that crosses Willow (or Palatine) Road.

The bridge is old, rusty and not much to look at but I am very glad that there is a bridge here or we may have another difficult road crossing. Now if we could just get a bridge, tunnel or even a crossing light where the trail crosses some of the other busy roads then we would have a much easier trip on this part of the DPRT.

Looking through the chain link fence at Willow/Palatine Road.

The Des Plains River Trail as it winds through the woods and over the small stone bridges just north of Willow Road.

This part of the trail can be a little rugged as you can see by the fallen tree here. In this case you can at least ride around it rather than having to stop and carry your bike over it.

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When you look straight up from the heavily wooded parts of the Des Plaines River Trail you will sometimes get a view of the sunlight shining through the leaves as in the photo above.

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Parts of the Des Plaines River can be very scenic when you know where to look and take a little time to notice what you are seeing.

The DPR trail itself gets pretty narrow and rugged in this section.

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Still there are some nice scenes of the Des Plaines River on this ride.

This is a view of the pavilion at Dam #1 in Wheeling as seen from the Des Plaines River Trail.

The trail branches away from the river here, is still pretty rugged and winds through the woods.

Once you cross the forest preserve road there is a small section of the DPRT before you get to Dundee Road. It can be very hard to cross the road here but as you see there is a path that goes to the traffic signal if traffic is heavy and you need to cross. This is where we ended this DPRT trip.

There is additional trail information and more photos of the Des Plains River Trail north of here (almost to Wisconsin) on the pages listed below.