Cycle Life Challenge Ride #7 Bean Creek Road
Today is the last of some nice weather we have been having. 80 degrees, but it came with a cost of a strong south wind. Dwight had planned a route from Potomac, IL to Collison, IL which mainly followed the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River. Lots of woods, which for us is a nice change of pace from ubiquitous fields of corn and beans. So, loaded up the bicycles in Dave’s truck and off we went.
It seemed as though what vehicles we did encounter were especially courteous of cyclists. Quite possibly due to a prominent physician from the Champaign, IL area being stuck and killed as he cycled with his family. TV news has given quite a bit of time to discussing cyclists and motorists and the concept of sharing the road.
It was a great ride, and the winds didn’t really begin to kick in until we were nearly at Collison — the south wind then gave us a nice cruise back to Potomac.
Here is a photo journal of the ride.
Rich-Illinois
Very much enjoy all the entries you all have provided -- great to see the everyday cycling venues. Being in eastern Illinois, scenery certainly isn't our forte, but oh well, the roads are normally quiet. Look forward to more and more entries from all of you, I do have a few over on BL -- in Bill's Day Rides, and one journal.
17 response to "Cycle Life Challenge Ride #7 Bean Creek Road"
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It’s a shame that it takes a death of a cyclist for motorists to change their attitude, same here unfortunately. Enjoy the last of your sunny, warm weather.
I totally agree — turns out the guy who hit him turned himself in.
Updated story: https://www.wcia.com/news/man-turns-himself-in-for-deadly-hit-and-run/
Only turned himself in because the police knew he was the driver.
Ah, a rare example of near-perfect weather conditions for riding in central Illinois! Now I’m envious, and I really do miss pedaling there. Besides, who could possibly resist riding on a route called “Bean Creek Road”?
🙂 What I thought too. When we were in Indiana we ‘had’ to visit the town (?) of Bean Blossom.
Beans, beans you know ;’-).
Our weather is about to change for a while with cold front entering.
That ride definitely looked like a nice change of pace from your usual rides.
Just had/took the time to look at the photos on your blog. That looks like a great route you three did. So nice to have a riding buddy or two for these adventures. Great photos to take us along with you on this different jaunt.
Yes, your blog definitely showed a different side of Illinois bike riding.
When I see a name like Bean Creek I often start wondering about the origins of the name. Sometimes lakes are named after their shape, like Half Moon Lake or Bear Head Lake. Sometimes they are named after the things you can find in them, like Pelican Lake or Trout Lake. Surely a creek couldn’t be shaped like a bean, nor could beans flourish there. (An aside: I did camp one night along the Superior Hiking Trail on a lake named Bean Lake and it actually was shaped sort of like a kidney bean.)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is that Bean Creek was named after an incident in which a truckload of soybeans went off the road and it all dumped into the creek.
Here is the answer, but too long to post in one section:
Here we go, if it will paste:
Bean Creek, the eastern branch of the Middle Fork, was first knowli as “Sullivan’s branch,” but it afterward came to be known by its ‘ present name, from certain yarns that Albright spun in regard to the peculiarities of the people who lived along its banks and the qualities of the stream itself. The land along its border was well adapted to cattle farming, and the men engaged in that line got possession of the land
Albright, as one of them, used to tell his friends back east of the excellent country that we had here. He said that the stream run bean-soup, and the banks ‘were supplied with a natural growth of this nutritious vegetable, ready baked to a beautiful brown for the table; that the settlers just naturally collected it daily (except Sundays), as the wandering tribes of Israel gathered manna in the wilderness ; that. he was at first surprised at finding such delicious baked beans on every table, when he traveled through there buying up the fat steers that he found in endless numbers in that vicinity, and that he was more surprised when he found the generous supply with which nature had provided them. The yarn mas enough to give the name to this stream.
Beanblossom, Indiana was apparently named after a person of the name, and nearby Gnaw Bone is possibly this:
The origin of the name Gnaw Bone is obscure. One theory is that the town’s name derives from that of the original French settlement in the area, Narbonne, named in turn for the southern French city of that name. To the ears of English settlers at the time, “Narbonne” sounded like and came to be known as “Gnaw Bone.”[5][6][7] Another story says that many years ago some one was looking for a certain man and was told, “I seed him over at the Hawkins place a’ gnawin’ on a bone.”[8]
From Wiki
Nice pictures of your ride with your buddies, Rich! Glad you had such good luck with the weather.
What a pleasant ride 🙂 The guys thought a float in the Middle Fork would have been fun. So I see how Bean Creek got its name? What is the source of “Collision”?
Apparently, Collison is named for an early settler.
From Vermilion County History: “In 1828 Absalom Collison came to the settlement on the Middle Fork.”
Collison is pronounced as in the dog — ‘Collie-son’
Been wondering how your folks are faring with the fires in CO. Hope they are OK!!
Haha! My brain totally read Collison as Collision. Poor brain is toast after a day at work.
My parents are fine. Lots of smoke this summer has limited their hiking but no fires close to them. They had a fire pretty close by (they were scared but were never in danger) late last summer. They have done a fair bit of fire prevention work at their house to get their risk rating down to low for their insurance. They would not stay to defend.
The two biggest fires in CO history have pretty much gone through every special place my friends and I hiked/biked/camped etc. from my time at CSU. It even went through CSU’s mtn campus where I worked one summer, but luckily they were able to save all the structures (a fire had wiped out half the buildings in 1994 a couple summers before I worked there – that area all burnt again). It is so sad to think that so much of that is now burnt and my best friend from uni (who still lives in Ft Collins) will have kids that will only know the forest as scraggly and full of aspen and burnt snags. Much of the forest that burnt is of a vegetation type with a natural fire frequency of 75-100 years. Those forests take a lifetime to come back (if they aren’t burnt again). Climate change is certainly here.