Bicycling in a skirt? Oh yeah, piece of cake. I’m almost always in a skirt so I didn’t spend much time thinking about how it could be done. Besides, Minnie Driver did a lot of bike riding in a skirt in the movie, Return to Me. And I can’t get the pictures out of my head of the women back in the early 1900’s that were wearing the really long skirts and riding a bicycle, usually behind their sweethearts. (How did they do that?) There’s no doubt it can be done, but I do have to confess that I’ve had my share of getting the skirt caught in the tire or chain until I got a bike with a chain guard and found skirts with less “billowing”.
Last Saturday was the first really nice day for this spring. So my husband and I dragged the bikes out of the garage and latched the bike rack on the back of our Trailblazer. Then we headed out to Stratton State Park in Morris, IL and the I&M Canal Trail, one of our favorites. This 69 mile trail runs along side of the canal that was hand dug by mostly Irish immigrants between the years of 1836-1848. It’s pretty amazing when you know that they ran into a lot of dolomite that had to also be removed by hand. It opened a water highway between New York harbor and the Gulf of Mexico making Chicago the greatest inland port in America. The canal closed in 1933 when better forms of transportation developed.
It took us a little while to get on the trail. We had to latch all the camera equipment on the bikes and since we usually like to take a pit stop before we hit the trail, we found the bathrooms at the park were still locked. We road around the trail area in town in search of a public restroom, stopped in a new health food store (with no bathroom) and finally decided to take our chances and get on down the trail.
The day truly was gorgeous with plenty of sunshine and just a slight breeze. The trail was a little rutted from the utility vehicles that the park service uses, but still very passable. There is a lot of wildlife to be seen along the trail. We were lucky enough to see a blue heron very early on into the ride, but he wasn’t about to stop for pictures. I don’t know why he didn’t understand when we told him we only wanted to shoot him. Of course we meant photograph. Wildlife is so uncooperative. We also saw a red-tailed hawk, some swift moving ducks (so we never were able to identify them; they probably talked to the heron), lots of turtles basking in the sun, precariously perched in a row on fallen tree limbs, a beautiful friendly (luckily) Irish setter, named Charlie, a tiny finch that was very upset that my husband was trying to photograph under his tree, and the ever present Canadian geese, in the water, on the trail and in the marsh on the other side of the canal. They weren’t happy to see us either. During the summer we’ve been able to see deer, beavers and a water snake.
Goose sitting on nest. 
As we rode along, I asked my husband to check to see if I were being immodest while riding with a skirt. He said he couldn’t see anything and he was really trying! The only problem I encountered was the occasional gust of wind that blew my skirt up, but that was really rare.
The trail on this end passes a small camping area about a mile or so out. We have never contemplated camping there as it is too soon on the trail to be setting up camp. I’m guessing that Morris is about in the middle of the trail. Also along this part of the trail you come across a few areas where the canal merges with small lakes or ponds and this is where you usually see the most wildlife. On the side of the trail away from the canal it runs the gamut of woods to houses to marshes. All along there we could see where the Illinois River had over flown its banks this past winter and flooded the area. The grass and brush was matted down and you could actually see clearly into the woods.
We headed out once in the other direction towards Seneca and found the trail much rougher than towards Channahon. Going west, you run into a poorly maintained canal, more uphill riding and actually have to run down and up a ravine where the water runs over a concrete embankment to reconnect to the trail. It’s a great workout, but not for our first trip.
Continuing to travel east on the trail you will run into Lock #8 at Aux Sable about 6 miles from Morris. This has a unique wooden bridge that’s part of the trail. We stopped and photographed this area as the Morris River runs through here and there was a beautiful small waterfall and small rapids over several large boulders under another bridge. There is a large abandoned canal keeper’s house that was closed. This is one of the only two remaining lock-tenders houses left along the canal. We found an information sign with a wealth of history about the canal and trail. We also found an outhouse, so we lucked out after all.
We met a nice guy named Kris from Morris there that was fishing in the canal. He brought us over a crappy he’d caught and we took a picture of him and his fish. He doesn’t eat the fish in the canal, strictly catch and release. He wasn’t alone fishing in the canal. We passed quite a few people enjoying this pastime. The canal is large enough to accommodate a small fishing vessel.
Deciding that this was enough for our first outing of the year, we decided to head back before we ran into trouble. I have back problems that can somewhat limit me, but bike riding has always been easier for me than hiking. Riding back took longer as we stopped frequently to photograph the wildlife. I do better if I just keep going rather than stopping to rest, so these breaks were rough on me. It was late afternoon when we finally got back to the parking area which is really a marina for launching boats on the Illinois River. There were a few boaters still out trying to get the most out of a beautiful day to the beat of some fifties music. The small sea gulls were floating around looking for a snack.
We loaded up the bikes and headed home very satisfied with a wonderful day in the beautiful outdoors. We’re hoping to go out every weekend to a different trail, but this next weekend doesn’t look promising for the weather. Oh well, such is our fickle spring in the Midwest.