The Middle Fork Wildlife Area in East Central IL is a wonderful place to ride. There are wide grassy trails and shady wooded trails, flat trails and hills. There are prairie meadows, magnificent old trees, and overviews of the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River. You can ride across the river into Kennekuk County Park and ride to a different crossing back into the Wildlife Area.

When the first CMO rides were put on at the Middle Fork, the only maps of the trails were on large signs at the two trailer parking areas. The two maps were not the same, and each was only a very rough approximation of the actual trails. It was quite common for riders to get totally lost. One area that has a lot of wandering wooded trails is sometimes called “where-in-the-hell-are-we-land”.

This was way before GPS was available, so when I started to make a better trail map all I had was a roadmap, a topographical map, and dry-land dead reckoning. Over the years I improved the map, using GPS readings and satellite images when they became available. That helped, but people were still getting lost. So Carol Bertilson did a huge amount of work to make well over a hundred numbered trail intersection signs and put them into place, and I added the numbers to the map. Our map with trail intersection numbers on it has become the official map.

This year, Carol and I decided we should put on a 3-day ride celebrating thirty years of CMO rides at the Middle Fork. We used some of our favorite (most interesting and beautiful) places in the park where plates have been hidden in the past. For each of those locations we used as the plate number a year when that location had been used. For some of them, we even were able to use one of the same landmarks. We put plates on the ground, on tree trunks, on logs on the ground, in holes in logs, inside tree stumps, in bushes, and in the branches of trees.

On Friday we had 6 long-ride teams. We thought it would be a relatively quick ride, but we were definitely mistaken. The team Keep Calm and Ride On won in about 2 and a half hours, with the Pink Riders coming second in 3 hours twenty minutes.

Saturday’s ride covered the longest distance of all three rides. Keep Calm and Pink Riders came first and second again, out of 6 long-ride teams.

Debra Rubel had come with a horse to ride and another one to pony. It so happened that while she was signing in, Shelia Fletcher arrived to just to say hello and Debra offered her second horse for Shelia to ride. They returned after quite a long ride having found only one plate, but they reported having had a good time.

There were 2 short-ride teams on Saturday, with the Babes of the Woods winning and the Gypsy Travelers coming in second.

Friday and Saturday were hot, but predictions were that Sunday would be much hotter, with highs well into the 90s by afternoon. Carol and I decided to give riders and horses a break by removing two plates from the long course and one plate from the short course (and giving everyone credit for the plates). This let almost everyone finish and get on the road to go home before the heat really built up.

Seven long course teams went out. Keep Calm and the Pink Riders came first and second again, but with the smallest difference in time between them of all three days: only 12 minutes.

There were two short course teams. Debra rode out ponying her second horse (which she says makes it a bit tricky sometimes to read a compass). She found all the plates and came in first. The second place team was a pair of newbies: Susan and Cora. They too found four plates, which is really excellent for first-timers, especially at the Middle Fork, where we’ve sometimes had newbies come back without finding anything. I hope we’ll see them again.

We want to thank the park superintendant and all the park employees for welcoming us to this wonderful place to ride. The trails are well-maintained and trees that fall across trails are dealt with quite quickly. We also want to say thanks for helping with the lights and electricity in the shelter where we held our potluck.

(And special thanks from me to Carol for stopping me from getting poison ivy while setting up these rides.)

Here is a list of folks who have been ride managers at Middle Fork rides:

Sue Anglen
Carol Bertilson
Denise Bingamon
Michael Bingamon
Dave Caldwell
Marti Caldwell
Beth Colla
Michael Cruson
Sara Dick
Julie Irwin
Florence Mathieu
Jean McDonald
Jamie Reed
Cary Reed
Robin Sahner
Lynn Tague