Trail Photos from Crystal Lake to South Elgin

(click on any photo to enlarge)

The photo above is from the McHenry County Prairie Trail with the stream  of  rushing water on the right. The stream goes on for quite a while and is a very nice "side" attraction. :-) This view was as I was heading south which has a long downgrade and is much nicer going this direction.

I turned around just before the big hill (as you head south) and after the long double bridges south of South Elgin. This photo is the first of the long double bridges.

The photos from here on are South Elgin to Dundee - South to North

This is the second long bridge (heading north now). The bridges come together on a small island where there is a bend in the river.

Now for the much newer bridges on the trail. This is the Stearns Road Bridge over the Fox River. This was a big construction project a few years ago for the roadway bridge and it was really nice that they designed this with the bike bridge (with the green roof) underneath it. I was trying to include the old railway bridge in the distance in this photo (for contrast) but you can only see parts of it.

Then I decided to do a much wider (pano) photo of the entire bridge and the river. There is a slight "fish-eye' warping effect in this photo but it is not too bad.

Further north on the Fox River Trail  is the tower shown here. This is between Elgin and Dundee just south I90. I've ridden by this tower many times but never knew what this was or had a photo of it before now.

I just looked this up and discovered that this is called Pratt's Castle. It was built in 1937 as a private museum. I'm not really sure who owns it now but you can see lights through the windows so it looks like it hey are doing something with it..

This is just a typical view of one of the wooded parts of the Fox River Trail. This part  of the trail is south of Dundee (north of I90). Much of the trail is shaded with a canopy of trees on both sides of Dundee.

Then as I was finishing my ride and between Dundee and Algonquin I caught a little bit of a sunset at this opening in the trail. The trail runs right next to the river here and there are a couple of benches here too.

My wife and I had a little sandwich break here one time and that was nice (we just picked up some Submarine sandwiches before our ride and brought them with us).