cycling the old plank trail – rootbeer
Posted: September 21, 2014 Filed under: cycling | Tags: cycling, food, old plank trail, rootbeer 16 CommentsThe Old Plank Road Trail in Illinois is 21 very straight miles between Joliet and Chicago Heights. The easy ride will take you past many suburbs and you’ll see everything from Saturday French Farmer’s Markets, McMansions to 1950 style box houses, woods and wetland and malls and Costco. This trail was first a Native American game trail, and then a toll road where immigrants who couldn’t afford the barge fee on the canals paid a penny to walk along the wood-lined planked road instead of the rutted knee deep mud of the paths. It later became a railway and then finally a paved recreation path and a bit of a window into the settling of the Midwest.
It’s an easy cruising now, nicely paved past a variety of sights. There’s a great suspension bridge over the highway that must have won a prize somewhere, and halfway down the trail in Frankfort, where the tail passes right through town, you can stop at Build a Bun and get a custom hotdog and a root-beer. We found this new one from Missouri with the Route-66 brand.
refreshing – way to enjoy a bike-ride.
A new path, hot-dogs, sunshine and autumn air and a new root-beer makes for a great riding day.
bwthoughts 
Sounds like fun. And the Route beer creative.
“LOL” Route Beer!
Only you on your historic adventures would find that. 🙂
I’m learning there are a heck of a lot of Root Beer brands out there! Bill the trail sounds like a lovely ride. 🙂
Diana xo
Me too Diana – When I started this I thought there were only three. But finding the craft root-beers has become a fun hobby as we travel about.
so here’s a question… is root beer made from some kind of root?
the rood of the sassafras tree Diana, and the best ones use cane sugar and are all natural, though sometimes I think the labeling laws allow naturally artificial ingredients naturally 🙂
Thanks Bill. I like saying sassafras out loud too! 😉
Also, others add other leaves and berries, it’s sort of a concoction with some having a hint on anise or other flavors.
I love anise and natural ingredients in general!
this is from nourishedkitchen.com:
There’s an old-fashioned charm to homemade root beer with its odd array of roots and bark, flowers, leaves and berries. It, like many other fermented beverages, once enjoyed position as a staple of American cookery. Water, as you know, was not always potable and raw milk, small beers, cider, perry and other fermented beverages were consumed as the drink of choice – even for small children. For a time, each community and each family enjoyed a closely guarded homemade root beer recipe.
While most home brewers now make their root beers from commercially sold root beer concentrates, there’s a certain undeniable charm of brewing root beer the traditional way – slowly simmering a concoction of roots, berries, bark and spices, dissolving a sweetener into the herbaceous brew adding a natural source of yeast, bottling and then simply waiting for the yeast to do its work. (If you’re reading this on email, be sure to click through to view the history of root beer, the safrole controversy, its use in folkloric remedies and, of course, the recipe).
and so I travel about, and if I stop somewhere and we go into a grocery store while Jan looks at the healthy stuff I peruse the softdrink section for a local root-beer.
Great information! Did you ever try to make it?
ha ha – my cooking resume includes hot dogs and hamburgers and not much else….
🙂 !
good on the tongue – both ways 🙂
clever! Something six puns could run with maybe??
🙂