Sugar River and Colored Sands Forest Preserves 11-6-11

Some turkeys we saw on Forest Preserve Rd just down the road from Sugar River Forest Preserve on our way in.

We have been to both of these preserves before.

Previous Visit To Colored Sands FP

Previous Visit To Sugar River FP

Wilma and I had a nice 6.9 mile hike here. We parked in Sugar River FP near the River View shelter and hiked up to Painted Sands FP near the canoe launch on the south side of the preserve next to the river following the trail shown on the trail map. It took a little bit of doing but we found a trail that leads from the south side of PSFP up to the main trail loop on the north side of PSFP.

There is a lot of grade changes. Not any real hills, but almost constantly going up and down. It took us over 4 hours to go the 6.9 miles. This is the GPS grade graph.

We hiked the main trail loop there and then went back to SRFP backtracking the way we had come.

We saw three herds of turkeys and 4 deer in SRFP, and I got 4 ticks somewhere along the way. I did not find any ticks on Wlma. Guess the Frontline worked.

I had been told once that there was a trail along the river that goes north inside CSFP, but I did not find it, opting for one we found along the east edge of CSFP.