8-6-12 Ride the Hennepin Canal

This morning we drove down to Annawan, IL and had breakfast at "The Purple Onion" with that completed we drove to just north of I-80 on IL Rte 78 and parked at the canal. We rode east to the Basin and then turned around and rode west to Lock 23, which is a nice parking area with facilities, this will be our starting point for our next ride. Todays ride was just under 20 miles round trip, it was cool wnen we started out, but even though the temperature was only 68 when we were done we were warm from our ride. The path along this section goes from bitominous to FA-20, ( Ag Lime) which is well packed and nice to ride on, just west of Rte 78 was the roughest part of the trail, but not bad. Lock 22 is fairly complete as when it was in use commercially appearance wise. Until we were west of Annawan I had forgotten how close I-80 is to the canal, actually with in a few hundred yards and the rush of traffic going by can be easily heard. At Aqueduct 5 the bridge on I-80 is just to the south. Nice ride and the scenery was beautiful. Here are the pictures from east to west.

Bridge 18A looking east

Bridge 18A looking west to Lock 22 and lift bridge 19

The upstream lock gates at Lock 22, 

see the shelf that the up stream gates locked to

 Up Stream side of  Gates, there is a wall to the right of this picture

which was added to protect the gates, the water level on this side

of the lock is almost at ground level

 Lift bridge #19 part of Lock 22

 Looking east from Lock 22

 Looking west from Lock 22 at Bridge 19A

East end of Aqueduct 4

 Aqueduct 4 looking north

  Aqueduct 4 looking south

  Aqueduct 4 looking west

  Aqueduct 4 

 Bridge 20 looking east

 Bridge 20 looking west

  Bridge 21 looking east

   Bridge 21 looking west

 Bridge 22 looking east

Culvert at Bridge 22

 Culvert at Bridge 22 close up

 Bridge 23 looking east

  Bridge 23 looking west

Aqueduct 5 looking east

Aqueduct 5 looking north

 Aqueduct 5 looking south to I-80

 Aqueduct 5 looking west

Aqueduct 5 from the north east

Aqueduct 5 from the north west

Bridge 24 from the east

Bridge 24 from underneath, 

amazing what you can learn about people under bridges

Bridge 25 looking east

Bridge 25 looking west

Bridge 26 looking east

 Bridge 26 looking west

Lock 23 access where we turned around

and will start our next ride from here, our ride was just over 19.3 miles round trip.