[at-l] South Illinois's River2River Trail

[lbooher at pure.net (Leslie Booher)]

It wasn't far from where we lived in SW Indiana, but it really didn't have a great reputation.  No, it didn't originate as part of the ADT, as someone thought.  It was in place well before the ADT came along.  The ADT may have been on part of it, but the ADT came further north across the Wabash and into IN.  

What seemed wrong with the River to River Trail initially may have been fixed: it had a bad habit of popping up in shopping center parking lots, and it seems to me I heard that there was a lot of road walking.  I know that it had lots and lots of horses on it.  I've seen them, the few times that I was over in the Garden of the Gods area.  

When the ADT was first conceived and rushed to reality, they gave the job of laying it out to people who knew nothing about hiking.  The person who was asked to lay it out in our county had to do with tourism, as I recall, and she put it all on roads.  OTOH, that may have been all the public land that she could find.  I seem to remember that it connected further east to the Adventure Trail that Felix tangled with.  I also remember that it ran right in front of our daughter-in-law's house (before she was the designated d-in-l) in Mt. Vernon, IN, but I never saw anyone hike on it.  

anklebear