River Bend Forest Preserve

During the Pandemic, I sought out locations to safely get outside. Happily, the Champaign County Forest Preserve District does a fabulous job offering spaces to hike.

This map guides you through a wonderful, and overlooked, location: the River Bend Forest Preserve. It's located just south of Mahomet, Illinois. Here's an overview of the hike, with the Village of Mahomet visible around it.

Want to download a gps guide to the hike? Jump to the bottom of this page ( https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bc9fb2202e464cbfbd47e5ea7138fa4f#ref-n-61BVB0) , and there is a link to the gpx file that will guide you through it - and I have instructions on free apps you can download to navigate with it.

The hike is about 5 miles - I recommend 2 hours for the full circuit.

Directions to the spot can be found on  Google Maps, here . Our tour starts exactly where Google Maps has the pin: the parking lot next to the boat launch area.

As much as I love this hike, I want to be honest: it's not appropriate for anyone with mobility challenges. One reason is that the Forest Preserve lets fallen trees sit - including across the trail. At times you must step over fallen trees as thick as 18". If you take the alternate first leg (the blue path... discussed in more detail below), the trail is often overgrown and has spots of poison ivy. For all of this hike you'll want: long pants, thick socks, and bug spray. There is no drinking water on site. As a final point (am I selling this well?) cobwebs are common, especially in the less hiked blue trail and the loop around Sunset Lake; I wave my walking stick in front of me like a torch in the night.

OK, enough warnings... let's begin. Whether you take the moderately difficult path (in red) or the hard version (in blue), we start at point #1 below.

It's decision time! Do you want to take the harder path? This section shows you what that looks like; it's the blue path shown here. This route follows the river, leading to some beautiful views (see my pictures below), but it has the most treacherous path (see the other pictures.)

If you choose not to take the blue path, the red alternate appears in the next map section.

The red trail here is the alternate version of the route... the difference from the blue path above is that you go out and back the same trail. Good news - it's a beautiful one!

The pictures on this stretch take you out and back along the same path. I had to add enough pictures to make it smoother, including a few that weren't taken on this stretch.

The next section is the boring chunk of the hike. You'll pass back by the parking lot, completing the first loop, and heading up a gravel road by Sunset Lake. Along this stretch, I'm sharing information about two plant species, one native (Pawpaw) and one invasive (Honeysuckle).

With the boring part over, you head straight (off the gravel road) and around the fence that looks more imposing than it should. Past the fence, there is a trail and some wonderful things to see around the more sheltered Shadow lake.

The pictures of sunset in previous and next section were from my late afternoon hike in November when I caught the light at sundown – but almost got locked into the park! I failed to consider the recent time change and the fact that the park CLOSES AT DARK. (As it clearly says at the entrance.) Please don't make the same mistake.

Adding the next loop was the last part of the hike I figured out. Zoom out and you'll see that there are very few parts of the hike that repeat the same ground (assuming you take the blue path at the start). I was pretty proud that I found a way to include two more of my favorite sights - the Tree Tunnel and the Dystopian Wasteland - without re-walking more than a few dozen feet.

And now the best part... I save this part for the end of the hike because it's such a beautiful spot.

Most of the pictures here are of the same single location although I've stretched them out over the length of the space to show off the whole path.

And with that, we're done!

1) Install a navigation app.This free one worked for me: GPX Viewer. Android -  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vecturagames.android.app.gpxviewer&hl=en_US 

On Apple, here is a free one - but I haven't tested it:  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gpx-viewer-2/id6444086445 

2) Download the GPX files for my hike from this Dropbox site:  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/o87py25fat4s2upv4sgf0/AJSr5m5EsadoCVVeVyzU2os?rlkey=ygggh4zfrzof97002oszv5j4c&st=wealehhx&dl=0 

3) Open the GPX file in the app, drive to the Forest Preserve, and navigate!

Curious about how I made this map? Read my blog on working with StoryMaps to get the full story:  https://blog.tectonicspeed.com/2025/01/more-adventures-with-gis-storymaps.html 

Yes, even my map has footnotes! The section below shows the problem of a jumpy map that drove me to take more pictures. Without enough photos, notice how the navigation is jerky.