The Tour of Scenic Ogle County - or TOSOC (I’m not sure if you are expected to pronounce that or just say the letters, but I’ve been saying it out, like “toe-sock”) is a group ride that has been occurring in Ogle County Illinois for the past five years or so. It’s set up to benefit the Village of Progress, a community-based work program for people with developmental disabilities. It’s typically a single day, group ride, but that was in the before-times; this year it was set up as a virtual event, to be ridden between September 19 and October 18th.
I had never ridden in TOSOC before - my only group ride up till this point (and still, technically) has been The Farmondo. I’d considered riding in TOSOC last year - adding one more event to my very short list - but the scheduling didn’t work out for me. But since there was no Farmondo this year, and since the range of dates meant I could essentially pick my own time, I decided to give it a shot.
There were a lot of upsides to taking this option. First and foremost, the ride starts in Oregon, Illinois and, offering up some truth in labeling, the route moves through large portions of Ogle County, which is indeed some of the most picturesque territory in northern Illinois. It weaves its way into and around the Rock River valley. The county itself has been actively encouraging cyclists to come by offering its own website with bike routes laid out on it. An additional bonus was the fact that it laid out a 62-mile route (there’s also a 32-mile option), which provided an opportunity for me to ride my first metric century and do it while riding a) through beautiful country; and 2) to do so without having to sit down with the map and figure out a route for myself.
Handily enough, the route is laid out with Ride with GPS, which is both a website and an app. This meant I could pull the route up on my phone and get turn-by-turn directions.
The ride starts right next to the Village of Progress, at The Village Way, and almost immediately takes you up onto a wooden bikeway which leads you to Oregon Park West.
The extended bridge is an interesting way to begin, especially from the low vantage point of the trike. Oregon West Park is familiar territory for me because it’s where the Cross Country matches in Oregon would start and end (LB, my daughter, used to compete in cross country - myself, I can’t stand running...). But the route quickly takes you out of the town of Oregon, and into the countryside.
In addition to the rolling hills, which are plentiful in the area, there are other notable sights as well. The route takes you out of Oregon, but then goes through the towns of Mount Morris (twice, actually - tho the first time is brief and glancing) and Grand Detour.
Grand Detour is the town where John Deere (yes, that John Deere) invented the first successful steel plow, and there are historic markers there to honor that achievement. The town is named for the circuitous route the Rock River takes through the area - its grand detour around the spot, making it almost a peninsula into the river - as opposed to any pretense of grandiosity itself. But it does have a gas station, so...
Ogle county takes its pioneer history seriously, and offers markers along many roadways indicating things that were present or occurred in days past:
The second one here, marking a dark moment in the history of the county, also raises a couple of questions. The first is why it was felt necessary to have a firing squad of one hundred eleven men - seems a bit of overkill. The second is purely from the 12-year old boy inside me who cannot help but giggle at the phrase “500 aroused citizens” being preserved for posterity (and yes - giggling at such a somber tale is unseemly, but my 12-year old boy is really kind of a jerk, so...).
Another other thing the ride has to offer is taking you along multiple nature preserves and sights. There’s the Bald Hill Prairie Preserve...
...The Silver Creek Biodiversity Preserve...
...And the Nachusa Grasslands...
...which has to include possibly my favorite warning sign ever:
While the route it doesn’t necessarily go into the preserves, what it does do is ensure variety of scenery. While I often say here that Illinois is not the homogeneous continual cornfield that some people think it is, let’s be honest - there is a lot of corn here. It must have been challenging to lay out a route that didn’t simply offer up mile after mile of agriculture alone, and running along the boundaries of the preserves serves nicely in that respect.
And it also offered another staple of rural Illinois riding: Cemeteries
I counted at least six cemeteries of various sizes along the route. These are common features of the Illinois countryside (and perhaps every countryside) and, like the historical markers, always make me think of those who came before. But the ones that especially make me think are the tiny, hidden ones.
This one, just past the sign for Bald Hill Prairie Preserve doesn’t have a sign to give it a name, and google maps (which often does have names even for these little spots) doesn’t identify it. The folk there were cared for enough to be laid to rest with respect, but now they may be mostly forgotten.
And there were a couple of other curiosities as well. There was this cement corner marker:
You see cement markers like this periodically around the countryside, but I’ve never seen one with the lettering this one has. I have no idea what it means.
And then there was this:
This place is clearly an artistic labor of love, by someone with stone working capabilities. I tried a couple of searches to see if it is featured somewhere, but at least a quick effort didn’t turn up anything.
It was a good ride, and I appreciated having the opportunity to take it. Probably the only down-sides to the route were a couple of tense moments - crossing the Rock River going south of Grand Detour and a couple of miles on Daysville Road towards the end of the ride. In both cases this was just because they were heavily traveled routes, with traffic sometimes stacking behind me until there were openings for cars to pass. I’d imagine this would be less of an issue on an actual group ride day, where the bike activity would be anticipated.
I’ve been lucky enough to hit a few goals this year, despite (or maybe, in some ways, because of) the general unpleasantness that 2020 has offered. I hit a half-century a few weeks ago and, with this, a metric century. Because the half-century went well, I figured the metric would be relatively easy - it’s only 12 more miles. It’s possible I may not have factored in the changes in elevation that go with roads going into and out of a river valley as a part of the ride - I was pretty wiped out at the end. And the next day.
Overall, though, I enjoyed it - loved the scenery, the weather could not have been better, and I felt like I had accomplished something by the end.
