East River Trail

I couldn't find a trail map so this is at least where we started

Old picture with my dad for Father's Day

So I'm (Kathryn) going to take a stab at writing one of these guys.  For Fathers Day I went with my dad on the East River Trail.  We started at the Birdland Marina near the north trailhead at McHenry Park.  From there we took it north towards the Neal Smith Trail.  I really enjoyed riding this one.  The beginning takes you right along the river and back behind the North football stadium.  You continue that direction and head past the old Riverview amusement park.  As soon as you get by that you're in some really nice wooded areas.  The trail wasn't busy at all which made it nice for easy riding and just enjoying being outside.  Throughout the ride we would break out of the woods and have a nice view of the river.  We took it about 6 miles out towards Merle Hay and decided to turn around.  As of now this was probably my favorite trail.  The scenery was perfect and being in the woods kept us shaded enough that we didn't get overheated which was nice because it was a scorcher.  As far as I could tell there were hardly and bugs but I'm sure if Hil was out there she would have swallowed a few.


This trail is in our book but it's some what outdated so the portion that we were on was only marked as a future development in it.  We could have started going south and that would have taken us to University and towards the Botanical Center.  Once past that it would continue through town and ended at Hawthorn Park.