Two big bike rides: Lake County's Millennium Trail vs. DuPage's Century Trail
Warm weather and long days mean more time to ride your bike. And bike trails may be closer to you than you think, especially with so many new connections coming together in the suburbs.
Lake and DuPage counties have been working especially hard at making countywide trail links, particularly with two systems: Lake County's Millennium Trail, and what DuPage County has dubbed its Century Trail.
So which one is harder - the Millennium or the Century?
Lake County's trail is slowly becoming one single trail, both paved and crushed limestone, while DuPage's Century Trail - that does mean 100 miles - is really a collection of existing crushed-limestone and paved trails as well as bike lanes and simply roads.
For both, it's best to have a hybrid bike with knobby tires, suitable for pavement and gravel. We gave both trails a try.
Millennium Trail
Lake County - the forest preserve district and the Division of Transportation - along with IDOT and even some village governments, have been working on the Millennium Trail for nearly two decades.
Nearly 27 miles are complete, in three sections, out of a planned 35-mile continuous trail.
Millennium Trail first opened in 2002 at the Lakewood Forest Preserve near Wauconda and Hawthorn Woods, at Route 176 and Fairfield Road. That's still an easy place to start, with plenty of parking options, and you can ride the currently longest continuous section of the trail there.
Go east on Hawley Street to Mundelein, or for a longer, more scenic ride, head northwest on what is a limestone trail for the first several miles until it becomes paved toward the Singing Hills preserve, after which you'll have a largely suburban view.
If you'd like an even prettier and peaceful ride, start up north at the Ray Lake preserve, on Erhard Road off Gilmer Road. The Ray Lake preserve has about 2.5 miles of gravel trail leading to the Fort Hill Trail, which runs another 2.5 miles or so to connect to the Millennium Trail at the Lakewood preserve.
Lake County forest planner Randy Seebach calls the ride an ideal example of the preserves.
Following the Millennium Trail northwest from Lakewood will take you about 18 miles before it ends at Gilmer Road. Near the end of that stretch, the county last fall finished a $3 million half-mile connection between the Mari Flat and Kestrel Ridge forest preserves, with a tunnel under busy Wilson Road.
Such features along with the paved section make the Millennium a pleasant and fairly easy ride.
You'd have to use roads to connect to the next portion at Sunset Avenue near Hawthorne Drive in Round Lake Beach - it's one of the connections the county plans to turn into a trail. Ultimately the Round Lake-area section will connect to a northern section along Route 173 headed to Van Patten Woods and the excellent Des Plaines River Trail on its north end.
The county also plans to connect the southeast end of the Millennium Trail to the Des Plaines River Trail's southern end to make a giant loop through the county. But it could be years before funding and plans are in place to complete the work.
The Des Plaines River Trail itself got its final link last fall after 20 years of effort, a third-mile connection near Lincolnshire, so now the trail runs 31 miles north to south continuously - "kind of the spine" through the county, Seebach said.
The all-gravel trail is beautiful and safe, with few roads to cross thanks to several underpasses - the only catch is you have to check the county's trail-condition website, www.lcfpd.org/Dprt/, to make sure an underpass is not flooded.
You can find the full lineup of Lake County trails with maps at www.lcfpd.org/maps/.
Century Trail
The DuPage County Century Trail is also known as the Centennial Challenge, an effort of the county forest preserve district and volunteers to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the DuPage forest preserves. The trail really is several trails and bike routes that already exist in DuPage County.
The core of the DuPage County trail system for years has been the Illinois Prairie Path combined with the Great Western Trail. It's one of the country's first rails-to-trails conversions, where old rail beds were repurposed.
The system, along with Kane County's Fox River Trail, forms a triangle with South Elgin to the northwest, Wheaton in the center of the county, and Aurora and Naperville to the southwest.
There's also a "main stem" from Wheaton east through many suburban downtowns - Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Lombard, Villa Park, Elmhurst. Ride this triangle and stem and you can log more than 40 miles.
But the Century Trail doesn't follow all of the Prairie Path and Great Western Trail. Instead it also tours countless smaller trails.
In the northwest that includes the Hawk Hollow and Mallard Lake preserves' trails in the Tri-Villages - to be enhanced this time next year by a new bridge over County Farm Road connecting the two preserves as part of the North Central DuPage Regional Trail.
On the west end of the county you're steered through the Danada, Herrick Lake, Warrenville Grove and Blackwell preserves between Wheaton and Warrenville, all of which have their own trails, including a new one around St. James Farm.
To the southwest you're led through Springbrook Prairie and further east in Naperville.
All in all, the Century loop runs counterclockwise so that you wind back up to preserves between Addison, Bensenville, Itasca and Wood Dale to the northeast.
The catch is this route isn't marked; there might be markers only within individual trails. You'll need a cue sheet supplied on a web page, dupageforest.org/trailchallenge/, to follow the route, and you'll ride on some neighborhood streets along the way.
That makes this a ride - or series of rides, if you don't want to do 100 miles at once - for the more dedicated bicyclist.
If you log your rides and complete the route, you can get an honorary pin. And you can seek out the 11 signs around the route marking the forest preserve district's century of work - though some will be slightly off the route within preserves.
You can read about and get maps to all of DuPage County's trails, and get "suggested rides" the forest district has put together, at www. dupageco.org/bikeways/.