Des Plaines River Bike Trail
Bridge Underpasses and Equestrian

This is where the Des Plaines River Trail passes through Wright Woods on our trip north from Half Day. The DPRT main trail and the trails that branch off into Wright Woods are very woody, shady and scenic. The shade on this trail is great on those hot summer days...

You get out of the woods into the open areas in this area also. This part of the DPRT is one of my favorites and even the open areas are really very nice.

I don't remember which highway underpass this is, but this is pretty typical of the highway crossings along the trail. It is great that you can go so far in this area (the Chicago suburbs) without having to cross the busy roads.

The underpasses will be closed at times though, when the river is high, so if there has been a lot of rain and the rivers are high, you may not be able to get through. I actually prefer riding this trail when it is hot and dry anyway although it can be interesting and quite a challenge to ride this trail when it is wet and the river is high (and flooding).

Mile Marker 23 is in another beautiful, wooded and shady area. I believe that this is just north of the Route 60 underpass (photo above). One of the photo techniques that I used to a lot for bike trail photo pages was to get a photo of the mile marker along with the scenery at that location. In this case you don't really see much of the scenery. Hopefully I will get a chance to enhance these photo pages soon.

You will run across some horse riders along the trail (and have to dodge some of their left over fuel sometimes too!). Some horses get a little skitish around bike riders but most seem to handle sharing the trail pretty well. I usually take it kind of easy when passing equestrian traffic (from either direction).