Explore the best rated trails in La Salle, IL. Whether you're looking for an easy walking trail or a bike trail like the Illinois & Michigan Canal State Trail and Grove Road Trail. With more than 29 trails covering 4126 miles you're bound to find a perfect trail for you. Click on any trail below to find trail descriptions, trail maps, photos, and reviews.
Trail is in great condition, hardly any bumps and just a small hill climb east of the trout farm.
It can get congested on weekends/holidays.
Very scenic views with forested and open areas.
It is about a 5-mile round trip from Royce Road to Indian Boundary Park.
There is a 2 mile connecting loop from the trout farm that goes around Whalon Lake.
Looked this up spontaneously and it was just a beautiful ride! Perfect date for my husband and I!
Surprised to see this amazing trail that has great bed and breakfasts along it is not noted as part of the Great American Rail Trail. It sure would help demonstrate more GART completion if it was.
Rose e-bikes from Alta to Wyoming. Ran out of power on way back, but worth the trip and experience.
This summer I'm going to ride my bike from Dixon to polo on the bike paths
This trail is a nice one if you are looking for something other than a super straight rails to trails corridor. I parked at the nearby and beautiful DuPage County St James Forest Preserve and took a connecting trail to the start of the officially named West Branch DuPage River Trail that heads south. Most of the route is in Forest Preserves, alongside the West Branch of the DuPage River.
Once you come upon the spectacular Naperville Riverwalk, north of downtown Naperville which does not allow bikes, you must use city streets. That provides a nice variety. South of downtown the trail is again in parks. One can travel all the way south into Will County, with more options for connecting trails.
The eastern side of this well maintained trail contains a wide variety of habitat including riverside, prairie, woodland, lakeside, wetland, and urban making this a 4 season ride. We biked through acres of golden rod in bloom which was just magnificent. The trail does get more urban traveling west and has intersections but does a good job of staying by the river.
Started out from Utica and rode to trails end in LaSalle. Trail was in fairly good shape, but needed weeds cut down. Went back to Utica and headed towards Ottawa. The trail was like an old maintenance road that had been neglected. Very tall weeds that prevented me in many places from seeing where I could ride. After going about two miles I turned around because I didn't feel safe. It's a shame that there is so little maintenance on what is a beautiful area.
Parked at the public parking lot trail access by KLB tax services. This is a perfect distance from Boilingbrook to Naperville, around 8 miles. This trail takes you right along the river. Notable scenic areas are Whalon Lake, Hidden Lakes Trout Farm, beautiful homes in the Knoch Knolls Rd. area and the Naperville River Walk. Seen many ducks, birds big and small, squirrels, ground squirrels, even some deer in the woods right after the Dupage Sports Complex. It takes you through prairie, woods and many parks along the way. Very well maintained. Awesome blacktop surface. You see plenty of people along the trail. Didn’t ride the whole trail past downtown Naperville but hope to another time. Downtown Naperville is super nice. Q-BBQ is amazing, so is the salted caramel gelato at Sweet Home Gelato. Enjoy! - BRB
A nice ride. The hub is a good place to start.
I started from the eastern trailhead off Hill Avenue. The parking lot is quite small – it can fit about six cars or so. There are other plenty of other access points with parking lots with more space, but the eastern side didn't seem to be nearly as busy as the other parts of the trail.
I will say this trail is pretty interesting from a road bike perspective. It goes through a decent amount of variety – everything from suburban backyards to country homes to pretty farmland to city parks to extremely dense forest, some of which was absolutely breathtaking. The western end was particular jaw dropping in this regard; as someone who's seen plenty of typical Illinois forests, this was something else. It was both lush and dense, but you could see far into the woods. This is the middle of summer so it was shockingly green – not just typical forest preserve green, but glowing green. In addition, there were a number of bridges to cross, either over roadways or bodies of water, ranging from ultra modern to some that looked positively rustic.
I split this trail into the eastern and western sections. The eastern section is a bit more rough – there's much more root upheave to the paved surface. It's not overwhelming (I'm looking at you Old Plank Road Trail), but there are enough that you need to be paying attention or some may sneak up on you and cause a crash. For that reason plus the fact that there are far more road crossings (that cars never seem to stop for you) on the eastern section, and it's a bit slower than the western section.
The western section has far fewer road crossings and allows you to pick up some speed and momentum. You can easily hit 25 MPH in some sections, especially off the bigger bridges. By the way, you should maintain control on the descent from those bridges; one has a rough patch of pavement (there are signs warning you about this), but more importantly, sometimes there are turns that sneak up on you. Speaking of which, there ARE a number of turns throughout that you may need to slow down, especially if you're riding it for the first time. It makes the ride interesting, but I'm so used to extremely straight trails here in Illinois that I was caught by surprise a few times. Not enought to cause an issue, but it did get my heart pumping a few times.
I did stop at Bliss Woods when it turns gravel and skipped the last half mile of the western section, as I didn't want to ride the crushed limestone of that part on my road bike. You could do it though easily with any bike though. Also note that there is a very small section that takes surface streets through an odd industrial / residential neighborhood and it's not well marked where you should turn when the trails dumps you there. Really there's only one way to go with one turn (which is marked) but it would probably be helpful to make a note of it. This happens going westward when you cross South Lake Street.
My suggestion is to start on the eastern side – you can use the rapid-fire road crossings and rougher surface to warm up and cool down, leaving the western section for a fun, speedy ride. Definitely a ride to hit if you're in the area.
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