Last weekend I found myself on the horns of a dilemma:

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to ride.

Okay - admittedly a very minor dilemma, but a dilemma nonetheless. The overwhelming majority of my rides begin and end at my driveway. This is one of the perks of country life here in northern Illinois - there is an abundance of relatively inviting, low traffic roadways easily accessed.

Usually what this means is that I just pick one of my well-established routes based on how far I want to ride, how much time I have and - particularly in the spring - which direction the wind is blowing (I try to arrange to have the wind at my back towards the end of the ride if I can).

But on this day I found myself procrastinating, being unsure of which frequently ridden path I wanted to take… and I began to realize that “well-established” and “frequently ridden” was maybe part of the problem. Maybe I needed to venture out and do something that didn’t start and end at the driveway. And then I found myself contemplating the Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail.

I’ve ridden this trail a couple of times before, both times starting at LaSalle, Illinois, and venturing out past Utica towards Buffalo Rock State Park. I have had a personal goal of making that ride to Ottawa and back, perhaps with a stop at Tangled Roots Brewery to get a growler full of Kip Kupfer, their amber ale (a personal favorite). It’s almost a 30-mile round trip - slower going because of the nature of the trail surfaces, but well within my capabilities.

Portions of the trail are pretty… rustic, and the nature of a canal trail is that it is a low-lying area, susceptible to flooding. In particular, there is a section of clay surface between Utica and Buffalo Rock that can become a virtually impassable, soupy mess, so I wanted to see if I could get some information on trail conditions before I headed out. Official sites weren’t terribly helpful on that front, but a question posted on the Illinois Recumbent Riders group on FB turned around an answer (with pictures!) very quickly (Thank you to the kind sir who provided the info) - the trail was dry.

This meant that Ottawa (and that growler of amber ale) was a very real possibility. So I loaded up the trike, packed in the growler, and rolled up a couple of ice packs into a blanket, and headed down to LaSalle.

It was a beautiful 80° (F) Sunday, so the trail head in LaSalle was as busy as you would expect - I was fortunate that there was exactly one open parking space when I arrived. Lots of bikes and bike racks were in evidence, so I expected to see a lot of activity on the trail. Fortunately - and surprisingly - this wasn’t really the case. I came across perhaps a half-dozen cyclists over the space between LaSalle and Utica, as well as occasional walkers. That was by far the busiest portion of the trail before I got to Ottawa, so I ended up having a lot of the ride to myself.

The early portion of the trail is among the most scenic, with actual open water in the canal (much of the later portions have long since silted in), rock formations that remind you that you aren’t far from Starved Rock State Park…

…And periodic bouts of botanical glory:

Utica is the first stop along the way.

It’s a lovely little town, with several things to offer, include an Illinois history museum, winery shops, and a handful of restaurants and taverns. Before I’d gotten the information on the trail conditions I had begun to reason through to the idea of just going, dammit, and if the trail conditions didn’t cooperate, turning around and consoling myself with a drink or two at the Lodi Tap - my ultimate solution the last time I’d encountered the clay soup.

I will also note, for those curious about the trail, that Utica shows up quickly - it’s a little less that five miles from the LaSalle trail head, and the trail is in relatively good condition and easy to ride between these two points. For people looking for a casual ride with perhaps some food and drink at the halfway point, LaSalle to Utica and back is a pretty good proposition.

For myself, though, I had other plans. From the marker in Utica you move across the roadway and on to the next section of trail. The entry to the trail here is marked with a sign, which is good, because the surface itself really just hints at being a pathway, like maybe it’s embarrassed and doesn’t want to stand out. And it quickly empties out on to a road.

So you might think to yourself “I don’t want to ride on the road - I thought the canal trail followed the old canal towpath”. Well, let me speak to the second item first by noting that the road you empty out on to is called “towpath road” - so this is still the towpath. And: while there are a couple of houses on it, it is not heavily traveled, and the surface is too poor for anyone in a motor vehicle to travel quickly without risking significant damage. In any case, it’s less than a half-mile of distance before things return to a much more rustic scene…

As you can see in the picture, much of the trail in this area is single track in two directions. However, folks like myself rolling on three wheels will find that the surface under the grass is more or less even with the exposed dirt. This portion of the trail may look a little intimidating, but it’s easily rideable on a trike. My Expedition is running Schwalbe Marathon Racers - essentially a touring tire - and I wasn’t having any trouble getting along.

As usual, shortly after you leave Towpath Road for the actual towpath, you reach the most rustic portion of the trail, in which you must ford a stream. Or at least that was what I expected, but someone had moved the bridge into position this year.

The bridge, such as it is, is a small, handmade affair. I have no idea whether this is something put into place by the park, or whether it is something that an enterprising soul just decided should be there. What I do know is that it’s location and utility do tend to vary from one season to the next. When I went through here in April of 2018 it was a little further downstream, and held in place against the current by tethers:

This year it is at a better crossing place, and in a spot where someone on a two-wheeled machine could easily walk their bike across (and some capable souls might even manage to ride across). It is not designed with a recumbent trike in mind:

However, what it does offer is the option of carrying the trike across - a sort of reverse portage, if you will - without having to walk through the stream. I still count that as a win. And walking the trike up and down the stream banks makes me very much appreciate the waist-level handle that my Power-On Cycling neck rest offers me.

The following section of the trail is probably the most isolated feeling portion of the path that I’ve ridden. On other sections of the path you can routinely see off to the sides, getting snippets of waterways and other things through the brush. But here, the prairie and water plants grow very tall on either side, feeling a little like a wall, and giving the impression that you are riding through a corridor of sorts, albeit one provided by nature.

It’s in this section, more than any other, where I start imagining this as a path being used in some alternate, maybe post-apocalyptic version of our world; a world where for some reason we don’t have motorized transportation or traditional roads, and this is now how we move about.

I mostly like that world, at least for the short period of time that I’m there. And as long as zombies don’t come shambling out of the brush…

It’s also this territory - between fording the stream and Buffalo Rock moving eastward - that contains the section of trail I was concerned about - the dreaded clay soup. Arriving at this point shook me out of my musings about the presence or absence of the undead. But, fortunately, reports received turned out to be very accurate. This is that section, on this ride more of a clay… bread? Toast?

I’m going for another food analogy there, looking for something dry but still a little soft, but I seem to be starving for the right idea. At any rate, this section begins right about mile 86 (counting down, heading eastward), as can be seen in the picture. You can see the multitude of tread marks and tracks signifying people who have encountered it during its softer states.

I realized as I started going through it that it wasn’t perfectly dry…

Given that it’s spring and all, that wasn’t terribly surprising. But it was more than firm enough to allow for passage without any significant difficulties.

It’s not far after that point that you reach the marker and entrance for Buffalo Rock State Park.

Ignore the goofy guy in the picture - look at the trike.

As the sign says, it’s only three miles from here to Ottawa, and I’d made it past the feared impediment (the clay, not the zombies. Or at least, not as far as I know…), so it seemed like the goal was finally in sight. After taking the picture of the sign I headed onward.

The first portion of the trail after Buffalo Rock heads through a wooded area, where there is at least one open field of spring flowers:

And through this section you will also find a couple of surviving remnants of the old canal lock system:

This is, I believe, the first surviving lock you come across after leaving the trail head in LaSalle (which has a more intact lock preserved there). It’s presence, here in the woods, reminds one of just how rural this canal was, despite its importance in the early days of the state. Canal tenders would have had to work here - and probably lived here, on the canal as well. It would have been a very solitary life, and one assumes they very much looked forward to the barges coming through, giving an opportunity to see and maybe even talk with others.

It was in these woods that I came across the only unexpected impediment:

It fell in the forest, but did it make a sound?

It’s worth noting that this sort of blockage is something that you should be prepared to encounter on the rural portion of the canal trails, at least here in Illinois. I think I’ve come across tree blockades on some portion of virtually every canal trail ride I’ve taken - on both this canal and the Hennepin Canal Trail. Most of the time it’s simply a matter of hopping off the machine and carrying it over the tree (as was the case here), though on at least one occasion at Hennepin the pile was so high and covered so much of the trail that it effectively marked the end point of my ride. I think for the most part, this is simply part of the deal. These parks are so big (long), and cover so much territory that there is simply no way for the park staff to be aware of every time a tree falls across the path.

A little way past this point, and it begins to give hints of civilization again. The trail is more clearly established, and you will actually arrive at a railroad crossing (this surprised me)…

…shortly before coming into Ottawa proper.

At this point I’d achieved most of my goal, but not all. I still had to find my way to the brewery to get my prize. I have been there several times by car, but it’s situated on a multi-lane, one-way street, so I wasn’t sure what the best way would be to get there on the trike. For this, I fired up google maps on the phone. Google maps offers cycling directions, which do a fairly good job of identifying low-traffic routes to a given destination. This worked a treat, taking me down a couple of fairly lightly traveled side-streets to get to Tangled Roots.

Once there, I locked the trike up, got out my growler, and went inside:

Finally! And - I’m pretty sure the mask only improves my appearance

Guidelines here in Illinois still want a mask indoors unless and until you are eating or drinking. Speaking of which, I decided to order up a glass of Belgian Wit to tamp down my thirst while I was waiting for the growler to be filled. This is when I learned that the pandemic guidelines did not allow them to fill growlers.

This was somewhat distressing - after all, that was part of the purpose of the trip. I mean, yes, I did have a wonderful ride through beautiful territory, and would get to repeat it on the trip back, and I would have a couple of hours worth of exercise in, and nearly 30 miles of ride under my belt on a beautiful Illinois spring day and… what was my point again? Yeah - kind of a first world problem here, isn’t it?

And it was even less than that, because while they couldn't fill my growler, they could fill “crowlers” for me - big aluminum cans, two of which equal the volume of the jug I’d brought in.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved beer!

(Very minor) crisis averted! In fact, as I sipped my Belgian Wit and waited for the rest of my order to be filled, it occurred to me that the “crowlers” (this is supposed to be a portmanteau of “can” and “growler”, I think - I don’t love it, but here it is anyway) were really a better option than a glass jug for transport on the trike anyway. The only downside was that I now had to transport the cans and the (empty) glass jug both back with me.

I unrolled my blanket, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the ice packs were still cold. I mean, that was my plan, but I honestly hadn’t been super-confident that it was going to actually work. I packed the crowlers in with the ice packs and rolled the whole thing back up and put it in the pannier bag.

The return trip was essentially a reverse of the ride up, as one would expect. I was heavier on the way back by about four pounds of beer, plus the mass of the Belgian Wit inside of me. The trike handles weight very well - there’s a reason it’s named “Expedition”, after all - so it was only really noticeable when I had to pick the trike up and carry it back over the tree and over the stream. But it was noticeable then - mostly because it significantly altered the balance of the trike, making it tail heavy. I hadn’t thought about that ahead of time, and it honestly surprised me just a bit the first time I picked the machine up. But I suppose this is something that one would have to consider for things like trike packing over longer distances and/or for multiple day trips.

This ride took me most of the afternoon, but that was mostly because of frequent stops for pictures and to get beer. To offer a gauge of what to expect: I was able to average just under 11 MPH (10.92 to be precise) for the ride, which is pretty good for a trike on these trails. My actual travel time for the ride without stops - helpfully provided by Cyclemeter - was about 2 hours and 40 minutes. I’d add a few more minutes to that to account for the reverse-portages over the stream and the tree, since that is also travel (but I suspect Cyclemeter doesn’t include it as such because it’s very slow).

So - if you are looking for a trail ride with a mixture of environments - solitude punctuated by small and medium-sized towns - and enjoy (or at least don’t mind) the potential challenge of carrying your machine over things from time to time, this may be a ride for you. Folks looking for something a little more settled, and who don’t have the completist need to start at the beginning (or end, depending on your perspective) of the trail might want to consider beginning at Buffalo Rock or even Ottawa as starting points and heading eastward from there.

Oh - I almost forgot the most important part: the beer was still cold when I got home!

Applied Life

I&M Canal Trail - LaSalle to Ottawa /May 30, 2021 by Erin Wade

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