UPDATE on Millennium Trail in Round Lake

The Lake County Forest Preserve District  addition to the Millennium Trail, a two mile segment in Round Lake from Litchfield Drive (Nature's Cove community) to Fairfield Park Disk Golf Course (Round Lake Area Park District) has the two missing segments now completed.

Last year, the trail did not start at Litchfield Dive, but now does as seen here...

...leading you the 3/4 mile section running behind the Valley Lake community and along a professional nursery, including a boardwalk over a wetland and through several brief but lovely stretches through woods...

Last year you then hit a section seen below of several hundred feet with only a single track and high prairie grasses...

...which now looks like this...

 The next segment follows the power tower corridor and crosses Nippersink Road...

Then after several uphills and downhills, the trail curves into the woods to avoid a wetland area, crosses under the power lines, crosses Squaw Creek on a bridge...

...and enters Fairfield Park (with signage warning you are entering a disk golf area with flying frisbees possible.)  There is a good size gravel lot at Fairfield Road for those who wish to drive to the trail access.

I've biked 160+ trails across the country, including 33 in the five-county Chicago area, and the two signature trails of the LCFPD (the 32 mile Des Plaines River Trail and 20 mile Millennium Trail) are among the best I've biked -- both place high on my list of the top 10 trails nationwide that I've been on.

I hope the FPD builds the "missing link" soon through Marl Flat Preserve to connect the existing section in Volo to this new Round Lake segment. Currently, you must bike 2.4 miles on Fish Lake, Waite, Wilson, and Litchfield Roads to make the connection.

The plans for the Millennium Trail are to extend it to the north and east to complete the "U" shaped loop and return to the Des Plaines River Trail from whence it began in Libertyville. I anticipate the trail will continue from the disk golf area, under the power corridor until it meets the Round Lake Bike Path, then on through several more forest preserves -- namely Rollins Savanna, McDonald Woods, Fourth Lake, and eventually Wadsworth Savanna (the trail exists or is being built in several of these areas and will include an underpass at Grand Avenue and an overpass at Rollins Road.)