Tunnel Hill Trail - Vienna to Karnak

I spent some time at the pointy end of Illinois recently, and this presented an opportunity to explore the Tunnel Hill State Trail.

Tunnel Hill is a rail-trail that runs more or less north and south for about 45 miles from Harrisburg to Karnak, much of it running through the Shawnee National Forest. For my part, 45 miles was a little ambitious (not to mention that I would have needed to get back to the car, so it would have been 90 miles...), so I started at Vienna and rode south to Karnak (and back), coming in at just over 21 miles.

I don’t think that I was aware before this that there was a "Vienna" in Illinois, but I should not have been surprised. This same broad area also hosts a Cairo (pronounced "Kay-Ro", thank you very much) and a Metropolis, and further north, near Springfield, there’s Athens (say "Ay-Thens").

I was aware of this trail because the recumbent trike groups on Facebook feature a member or two living in the area who ride it regularly, and make it look very cool. I am not generally an advocate of Zuckerberg’s monster, but specialty interest groups like this are the thing that proves the rule - if you are a cyclist with a FB account who is not in cycling groups, you are missing a bet.

Vienna was a convenient place to pick up the trail from where I was at, and I chose the route southward because the map suggested this would be a fairly remote and wooded route. Fair warning here - it does not feature the tunnel for which the trail is named. But it does feature a wooded ride with a variety of natural views along the way.

As you start out southward from the site office at Vienna you get a view of rolling fields through the trees:

The rolling grassland appears to be hay in the making - you’ll see more of along route 146.

The trail itself is crushed stone, more or less, for the entirety of the route. It’s a softer surface, so the resistance slows you down a bit despite the largely flat presentation (or, at least, that’s what I’m telling myself).

Early into the ride the first of many bridges presents itself. Some are traditional wooden spans:

But others appear to be the original rail bridges, supplemented with wooden guide rails on either end:

Every bridge that I crossed was well maintained.

The state DNR site says the only tunnel is at Tunnel Hill, but this is not strictly true - there is a brief tunnel as the trail passes under highway 45.

Not the sort of tunnel you might name a trail after, but it’s there nonetheless.

As the trail moves past 45, the landscape turns to wetlands. The trail itself is elevated, and so up and out of the way, but the views are close by.

I was riding the trail in springtime, of course, so it offered up flowers along the way.

There are also mile markers along the trail.

Given that the trail itself is about 45 miles long, it’s not clear what specific distance these are meant to denote, and websites on the trail appear to be silent on this point. But they still give sense of your progress along the route.

Heron Pond Lane crosses the trail, and the map indicates that that this leads up into Heron Pond Preserve.

My ride didn’t take me up that course, but I think I’d follow it next time. Or perhaps...

...I’d take the road to the left to visit the winery.

The map shows this as Cache River Basin Restaurant and Winery, and places it just a half-mile down the road. Google showed it as closing at 5 PM, which put me well past closing time as I rode past this point, but the restaurant is apparently open later. Illinois wine tends towards sweeter than I prefer in general, but I find it surpassingly cool that this feature is such a short distance off the trail.

A little further on the trail crosses into the village of Belknap.

Belknap is tiny, even by rural Illinois standards. Wikipedia (which is never wrong) places the census in 2010 at 104 people, and you’ll see cattle and other livestock as you ride thru to the next clearing.

From there the trail remains pretty remote. Google maps shows this as a dotted line on its bike-mapping service, which would suggest a rough surface, but it wasn’t clearly distinguishable from the rest of the trail. However, you are accompanied by streams or wetland on either side. Including, at one point, a tiny bit of whitewater.

You can hear this bit of rapids before you see it when approaching from each direction.

As you approach the end of the trail near Karnak, you’ll see the trail offshoot to the west.

I didn’t have time to explore the offshoot, and it doesn’t appear to be an official part of the Tunnel Trail, but I’d like to do so if the future presents the opportunity.

Also at this intersection are some facilities for people and their pedal-powered transport.

Shortly after this point you hit the town of Karnak.

I did not realize until doing my research for this post that Karnak also has its own Mediterranean/Little Egypt connection, sharing a name with a temple complex in Luxor, Egypt. I should not have been surprised.

The ride back was a delightful reverse of the ride down, with one exception offered up by Belknap. As I came out of the trees to the brief opening it offered, I was joined by a bit of company.

These escapees were presumptively from the fenced pen the calf was in front of, though I couldn't see a break in the wire. They were unperturbed by my presence, though the entire tableau gave the impression that momma was enjoying some particularly fresh grass while junior was worrying that they’d be caught, standing back by the fence as he was.

Aside from the occasional car on roadways that paralled the trail, I saw exactly two hikers on the entire 10 miles of the trail. I was otherwise alone for my ride. Solitude was the name of game.

Overall, this was a lovely ride with some very enjoyable scenery. I’d suspect that spring or fall would be the ideal times for this section of the trail - though it’s predominantly tree covered, which would help with the heat, I’d have to imagine mosquitoes would be prevalent along the wetlands as summer rolls in.

If the opportunity presents, maybe next time I’ll take that side trip and have a glass or two of wine...

New Project - Trailer Part 1

Trailer Project Part 2

Trailer Project Part 3

Trailer Project Part 4

I’ve had this bike trailer for well over a decade. If memory serves, it was a garage sale find, and it served for several missions of child hauling during LB’s younger years. With sufficient preparation - books to look at and drinks and snacks and such - LB would remain content to allow for an hour or more of riding time, and it added a different dimension (mostly additional weight) to my regular riding routine.

I’d hoped that this experience would also spur in my child a love of cycling the way that riding with my father had in me. Unfortunately my parental failure is complete - my child prefers running to cycling. The horror!

When LB got too big for the trailer we continued to use it to carry things - a cooler for refreshments or a picnic during a break, groceries on the occasional trip to the store. But when we moved from the city out to our homestead it got stored in the rafters of the garage, with the intention of getting it back down to ply into service again as a cargo hauler. Someday.

That was nearly 10 years ago.

I’ve been thinking about it more regularly lately, tho, with the particular idea of using it with my Catrike Pocket when I am on functional rides - e.g. trips where I’m using the trike as transportation and not just recreation. But the decade in the garage rafters has not been kind to the trailer...

There’s the general dust and debris from sitting unattended in an outbuilding for an extended period of time. But I had a chance to look at it a while back when I was up on a ladder, and I knew there was going to be another, larger (or, if you like, smaller) issue - the mice had found it.

There’s a lot to like about living out in an intensely rural setting. The privacy, the open air, the prairie wildlife.

But not all the prairie wildlife is enjoyable. If you are someone who is now thinking "but mice are cute", I would submit that you are someone who has never actually lived with mice. When you live out in farm country you quickly realize that they are everywhere and that a field mouse, given the choice between living in the actual field for which it is named, and living in your home or another, similar structure, will opt for the latter every time. And it is surprising just how unpleasant and damaging such a tiny creature can be. They will get into cabinets, drawers, vehicles (that’s a fun surprise going down the road, let me tell you); they will urinate and defacate everywhere, and tear up whatever is around them for nesting material. I don’t love the mice.

But I digress. I’d noticed, back when I was up on the ladder last, that mice had nested in the trailer, and this meant that I was not going to have the option of just getting it down, hooking it up, and going. The body of the trailer is mostly canvas, and that material was going to have been soaked with rodent effluent. It was going to have to go. Which is part of why it’s taken me a while to get to this - it was going to be a project.

Using one of these old trailers as a base for a different design is not a new idea, not original to me, to be sure. I have a well documented dislike of Facebook, but the recumbent trike groups within Facebook are an exception to that rule, and lots of people more capable and creative than I have gone through and modified these items to good effect. In the hopes that folks will understand that mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, I’m going to copy from some of what I’ve seen and see what I can put together with this.

One of the questions I had to begin with is how to hook it up to the trike. It’s meant to attach to the lower rear bar at the back of a diamond frame bike. That bar is bigger on the Pocket, and not easily accessible with the frame bags in the way (and I don’t intend to use the trailer all the time, so it won’t replace the bags - they are staying). For the moment, at least, I’m thinking that it can connect to the rear cargo rack:

I think that may work, though it does put the trailer at a bit of an angle. I’ll have to think it thru a bit.

Any project that I start competes somewhat with my actual riding time, so I don’t anticipate this will get done in a hurry. But I’ve gotten the thing down out of the rafters in part so that it’s in my way, and thus has to be contended with. That should help ensure that I deal with it sooner rather than later - you know, not another ten years...

Lack of Support (TTAKS)

The 12.9" iPad Pro was released in November of 2015 - nearly two years ago. One of its many key features was a new, full-sized virtual keyboard configuration. As a regular user of the iPad for work, this was a huge leap forward in typing on glass.

Nearly two years in, as one might expect, virtually every app available for the iPad has been updated to support the full keyboard configuration. Virtually every one.

Virtually.

The standouts? On my iPad Pro there are two that are notable:

• Facebook
• Mint

This might - might - be considered forgivable for the Mint app, which is primarily a dashboard for looking at your financial accounts. But Facebook?

Open the Facebook app and you are greeted at the top of the timeline with a box that asks "what’s on your mind" (or whatever this month’s vapid prompt is). It immediately invites you to write something about your day. Unfortunately, if you are interacting with the Facebook app on your 12.9" iPad Pro, tapping into that box gets you a keyboard that looks like this:

This ungainly laid out key formation is the one designed for the 9.7" iPad and, when displayed on the much larger iPad Pro screen, stretches the keys out to a distance that might be useful for Andre the Giant, but is quite a reach for a person with hands that are a perfectly normal size.

One might ask whether Facebook is possibly unaware that Apple released this larger version of the iPad some 23 months ago - perhaps they are busy sorting through other issues, and so have missed this development. One might think this until one has to contact someone thru Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Messenger, of course, is an app owned and operated by Facebook. An app which, incidentally, has been updated to work with the iPad Pro’s keyboard.

Ok, so, that not being the case, maybe it’s just that Facebook hasn’t had an opportunity to update the app.

Not once. Not once in the 144+ times they have updated the app since it was created...

So to be clear, this company makes an app that invites you to type things, has already written the code for the new keyboard and put it into place in another app, and updates the Facebook app approximately every other day, but can’t seem to find the time to make this change.

The living definition of a first world problem? Absolutely. But this is a company that a huge percentage of the country interacts with on a routine basis. Of course, we’re not their customers - we pay nothing for it. Facebook’s customers are the advertisers that buy space in your timeline. But they need our eyes, our attention, to sell. They might not to consider stepping up and making things more pleasant to use.