The Long Prairie Trail goes east-west across Boone County and it is one of the Boone County Conservation District properties. It is a paved 14+ mile bike trail. Maybe sometime Wilma and I will give the whole trail a try. It roughly follows route 173 through Boone County and connects to the Stone Bridge Trail in Winnebago County to the west, and dead ends at the Boone County line to the east.
We walked this on Christmas Eve. Started at Roland Olson Forest Preserve, took the Stone Bridge Trail to where it meets up with the Long Prairie Trail, and followed the LPT until it got to Brown Conservation Park at Caledonia Road. Then we turned around and went back.
Base Camp says it was 5.4 miles. That sounds about right. Took us almost exactly 2.5 hours and it is a nice level and easy surface to walk and that is about the typical pace I walk at. The creek shown in the GPS map actually exists, but the steep walls along the trail would make it difficult to access.
/This Google map shows our start and end points.
This is the district's map of the trail. I added Brown Park to it.
/We parked at Roland Olson FP.
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/I read about this in the local newspaper blog that follows county government. They are actually paying some contractor to come in and cut down the pine trees. To me it is a forest PRESERVE district, they should be preserving the forest, not cutting it down. I suspect some eco nuts got in the loop. Couple that with the bureaucratic mindset about spending every nickle they can, and some enterprising contractors, and this is what you get.
Maybe this is how they pay for cutting down the trees. Closing the gates and not plowing it for the winter. I am not necessarily opposed to this as a cost saving measure, but IMO if they have money enough to pay some connected contractor to come in and cut down trees, they should be using that money to keep the preserves open during the winter.
/A herd of chickens along the Stone Bridge Trail that abuts the south side of the preserve. Wilma wanted nothing to do with the chickens. Must have been at least a dozen of them.
/Odd erosion pattern in the blacktop around the yellow stripes.
/A horse we ran across.
/The trail is blacktop, about 10 feet wide. It is the same old RR bed as the Stone Bridge Trail, constructed similarly. Much of the trail has steep drops offs along side it, some times 40 or 50 feet, and a few places it is level to the adjacent land. There are even a few places where it has been dug out and there are 5 to 10 foot high berms along side it. Like the SBT, there is a mostly wooded buffer of 30-50 feet on either side of the trail. The trail section we were on was well maintained.
/The scenery is a lot different than the SBT though. It is mostly farm lands, so I did not feel like I was walking thru people's back yards so much. There are several stone culverts that go under the trail. I don't know if they are for drainage or once provided access to the farm fields, or both. The steep sides along the trail would make it difficult to explore them, except at one spot where it might have been possible. Probably would have been a nice picture but it was on our way back and I did not have the time to spend. There are a number of places where farmers cross the trail to get to their fields. Some are marked with signs and stripes on the trail, a couple are not marked at all. Some have pavement adjacent to the trail for the farmers, others don't.
We ran across some joggers, walkers, and bikers. Maybe a total of 8 to 10 people and 2 dogs. We even ran across an older couple with the two dogs. The man was pushing the woman in a wheel chair. They had two dogs with them. One dog was an older golden retriever who I ran across sleeping at the trail head at McMichael Road. They said he was too old to walk but wanted to come out with them so he slept there and waited for them to come back. I am not normally a fan of loose and/or unleashed dogs but both dogs were friendly and well behaved. They pointed to a house near the trail head where they live.
The chickens are at 1:45. Wilma wanted to go the other way, and I had to really nudge her to go toward the chickens. She has seen all manner of other birds including turkeys, ducks, and geese, along with deer, and never showed any inclination at all to head off in the other direction. I wonder why she is chicken of chickens.
Parking, toilets, and water at both Roland Olson FP and Brown Conservation Park although Brown Conservation Park where we turned around seemed to be semi-closed. The parking area was blocked off, but the well worked, and the toilets were open. I am going to email the district and ask about it, as I kind of had in mind parking there next week one day and walking another section toward the east and back.
ETA 12-27-11:
I got a reply back from the conservation district.
Yes the Brown Conservation Park is closed for the season. We currently plow two access points for the Long Prairie Trail. We plow the lot at Caledonia and the County Line Road access points.
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