Big Rock Forest Preserve

This walk was my husband's idea, he keeps telling me how pretty the lake is at this preserve, and that it is only catch and release fishing. It is about 6-8 miles west of 47 on Jericho Road. There is a big hill to climb there and so there is potential to raise my heart rate for sure. I had been before, but not in many years. They have improved it nicely. The lake is beautiful and was man made decades ago for mining and then a creek overflowed into it, creating the lake. It took us about 45 minutes to go up the hill and then around the entire lake. Quite a few people were on the trail, most had dogs and most of the dogs were on leashes. This would be a good spot to rant about dogs off of leashes, but I do realize there are many perspectives and mine would be from someone who loves puppies, but is afraid of dogs. There are other trails to explore there and I want to go back when the leaves are changing more, I know it will be beautiful.

Lake Run Forest Preserve

This is a newer trail about 2 miles west of Deerpath Road and just east of Norris Road. I thought it was funny, when we pulled into the paved lot, a forest preserve truck was the only vehicle around and its occupant was napping. We wondered if that was his break or if we were seeing our tax dollars at work. The trail is a crushed stone path and we did a loop that was about a mile. There was another trail that went in the opposite direction and it looks like it goes a bit longer. I have plans to do that on a future walk. It was quiet, no other walkers or bikers, but there are a ton of grasshoppers on the trail, not enough to be too annoying though, and you could hear them hopping along in the grass as we walked. It was a nice sound. It has a small forested spot and then mostly open prairie, very nice trail and I will walk it again soon.

Lone Grove Forest Preserve

I didn't get a pic of the sign like previous forest preserve posts, just two pics of the trail. Lone Grove is out in the county, a few miles west of Route 47 on Perry Road just west of Kaneville. Tom and I walked the short trail that is a half mile long and then there is a trail that is 1.5 miles long too. The trail is not paved, but it is fairly wide and the grass is cut short enough. I recommend hiking shoes or something comfortable and nothing like the opened toe sandles that I had on, if your going to walk this trail. It was really quiet there, with lots of moths and flying things and the mosquitos were easily outpaced on the day we walked. Pretty forest, fairly flat and easy to walk overall.