Today I decided to head south on the McHenry County Prairie Trail and go to the Fox River. When I got to the river I decided to go a little farther.. and farther, until I ended up all the way down in East Dundee at IL-72 (There's a DQ there where the Fox River Trail crosses IL-72. The path becomes the Fox River Trail when you cross into Kane County, just south of Algonquin. I saw many squirrels -- maybe 15 or more, but never had my camera handy to snap a picture. I did take some other pictures.
Just south of Rakow Road in Crystal Lake, there is a large gravel pit operation and I snapped a few pictures of this operation.
Those conveyor belts run for what seems like a few miles, pulling gravel.
There are fancy contraptions to move the gravel from a belt at one height to a belt at another height also.
Must be doing some sort of processing of the gravel in this old building... or the building is just there to look pretty. Not sure.
Above you can see something strange. There are gates across the path and they detour you just around the gates through a crosswalk. Its unclear why they did this, except maybe to force bikes to slow down and/or stop at the road crossing. Maybe bikers were blowing through the stop sign and running in front of cars? Hard to say.
The Fox River Trail follows the Fox River south of Algonquin on its way to Carpentersville.
Another shot of the river above. In Kane County, there are several spillways that run right across the path draining into the river. All but 2 were dry today, and those only had half an inch of water in them running into the river. I suppose on a rainy day the trail would be a little more dangerous. One section of the trail actually went from blacktop to packed dirt as it was very close to the river and perhaps they'd lost the battle with the river flooding year-in and year-out and so they left this 50 yard section of the path unpaved.
As I came into Carpentersville I came across a couple of coffee/snack shops right along the trail. A bit farther south, at the Main Street crossing I saw this strange car in a parking lot next to the trail. It turns out the guy had a grill on the back of the car and was selling drinks, hot dogs and brats to hungry/thirsty trail riders! I only had my debit card, so I could not get anything.
I finally reached IL-72 and the Dairy Queen in East Dundee. Here I sat on one of the many picnic tables for a few minutes drinking some water before heading north on the return leg of my trip. On the way back, I saw the same sights again, including lots of squirrels and other bikers on the trail.
Total distance: 25.13 miles, ride time: 1hr 55 min, avg speed: 13.07 mph
