The North Branch trail is a wonderful bike trail. From the paved asphalt to the shadowed trees covering the majority of the trail, this bike path is enjoyed by a majority of the suburban area for leisure and exercise. Through the years, Bike the Parks have used the North Branch trail as our bike highway getting to numerous suburbs to bike their parks. So while biking, we began to notice side dirt trails that spun off the trail as in the second and third photos. Our bike trip today was exploring these trails.
 |
| Trail Loop Around Prairie |
 |
| Trail Entering from Woods |
Of course with exploring comes difficulties with terrain such as in the picture below. Though we had forgotten while biking to the this spot, we remembered when we got there that it had rained the day before causing the North Branch of the Chicago River to flood. Just getting to where our bikes were in this picture was difficult because flooding had caused about half of the side trails to be underwater. All the water you see in the picture below shouldn't be there.
 |
| Trail Looking into the Flooded Portion of the Chicago River |
After exploring the wooded area of the trail we found a dirt trail that led us to a clearing. Once in the open we saw a vast prairie (as shown in the first two photos) that had a half a mile loop going around it. Traversing around the loop, it seemed sparsely used with some the trail made with tire tracks though definitely hybrid bike tire (and up) friendly.
 |
| View from Bridge |
 |
| Stone Bridge |
Heading up north past Beckwith Road, the trails became more numerous. To get to the grouping of off shoot trails there was a bridge over the Chicago River. This stone bridge has some particularly scenic views looking down the river and the Bike the Parks team also noticed that the height of the bridge was tall enough for canoeing or kayaking even with the flooding. The trails then split into a larger bicycling dirt path and a walking path. After taking the bicycling path a couple hundred feet we ventured onto the walking trail. We understood why it was labeled a walking path. This path was riddled with roots and rocks that are only suitable for feet..... or mountain bikes! This was a great surprise because the Chicagoland Area tends to not to house many natural mountain biking trails, from our exploration. This trail was on the more versatile end of mountain biking trails, a good trail for someone just starting to learn how to mountain bike. Anyways, our mountain bikes were up to the job and we had a blast.
