Pecatonica Prairie Path and Meadowdale Raceway Woods

 Today was the day I would go check out the Pecatonica Prairie Path. Here is a cute little rendition of what someone WANTS you to believe about the PPP. And here is what I really ran into!

So I made it about 1.6 miles before I decided that I had grossly underestimated the difficulty of this trail. Different planning will be needed for this part of the GIT. I will have to set aside one weekend just for this 22 miles of trail due to its divots, ponds, swamps and creeks that they like to call a path. I will have to strip the bike of panniers and bags and I will strap a waterproof bag I used for white water rafting to the pannier rack. I figger i will have to use an old blanket on the drivers seat in my car so when I finish the path the mud wont get all over the car. I will have to triple bag my camera if I am going to plan to take it. I am assuming that as fun as this ride will be, I am sure I will be exhausted when I complete this. Normally I would finish 22 miles in something like two hours or so. But I bet this will take me more like 6-8 hours. Also, I think that since I will be doing the other legs of the GIT trail with my Hybrid Folding bike, I should use it for this ride also. The semislick tires on this bike should probably make it more difficult than if I had used my regular mountain bike with the big knobby tires.
    Overall I was fairly disappointed with this outing. So I decided to stop at a trail that was local. I stopped off at the Meadowdale Raceway Woods Trail. It has a nice long history of use, disuse and misuse. Once the Meadowdale International Raceway, is now Raceway Woods. And the Google image search.