Kickapoo Rail Trail Aventure

Illinois like many other states are changing no longer used railroad tracks back to life as Rail Trails. Nothing like the first Rail Trail located in Sparta Wisconsin 🙂 but still nice.

Once fully completed, the trail will be @ 22 miles long. We traveled the solid orange line in the purple box. The dotted lines represent incomplete areas where solid means completed area.

What made the path we took special is the 88 foot high and almost 1/4 mile long trestle bridge. The bridge went over the Middle Fork Vermillion River.

The picture below is a screenshot from website: Kickapoo Rail Trail (enjoyillinois.com)

We parked and rode our bikes from the Oakwood, IL which is a really nice small town with parking right next to the trail.

We parked in Oakwood, IL. The spot had places to park, restroom and police station.

Oakwood Illinois view going east. Trail had a bench, repair kit, and memorial for the military, police, firefighters and others that served.

I think you’re supposed to lock your bike to the bike decor. I’m not exactly sure how.

I love how the garbage can was decorated.

When we were < 1/2 mile from the bridge, we stopped at a parking lot / biker station along the road. It had an orange bike stand / locking station that I’m not exactly sure how were supposed to use.

In the Kickapoo Park area of the trail, there was a parking area with pit toilets (which I did not try), bike repair and some more orange bike lock stations.

The stop also had a large trail map. The map indicates we could have ridden our bikes to the trail from the campground. Personally, I wouldn’t want to ride from the campground because of the hills.. I’m a little bit of a woos.

Trail map solid purple line shows the section we road. The map does not include the Oakland section. The dotted purple line is how to get to the trail from the campground. We did not do this because it was a longer bike ride than we wanted and a few steep hills.

The best part for last. The Trestle Bridge and Selfies…

I had to take a selfie on the Trestle Bridge.

Selfie of John and me on the trestle bridge.

View from both sides of the bridge. The sky looks a little rough. This was another one of those rain days where we found a couple hours of no rain to adventure outside.

Same overlook as the other picture only the other side.

Trestle bridge overlooked the Middle Fork Vermillion River. It’s 88 feet tall and almost a quarter mile long. With two overlooks.

John did a panoramic view of the bridge, and it turned out as almost a mirror image. I thought it was pretty cool.

Link to Kickapoo Rail Trail Website: Kickapoo Rail Trail | Champaign County Forest Preserve District (champaignforests.org)

I hope you enjoyed learning about our trip.

GlampingWithCats.com

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