Des Plaines River

This is a good river to do for a shakedown run for any gear you might have. It's convenient to do for us because it is very close.
We canoed the Des Plaines river from Columbia woods forest preserve in Willow springs to the Isle a Cache museum take out in Romeoville.We estimate it to be about 12 miles so we figured it would take us about 3 to 4 hours. There happened to be a brutal headwind of 20 MPH. It was in our face the whole way. It took a total of 5 hours to get to the take out!
The first bridge we went under was route 83. The next one was Lemont road. There is also a railroad bridge right past Lemont road. There is a good place to stop for a break right past the RR bridge. Pull over river right onto a pretty flat, but wide rock ledge. The next bridge was Interstate 355 and just past that is a small bridge for the Veterans Memorial bike path! About 4 miles past 355 is Isle a Cache canoe launch take out! It was a cool trip but the wind kicked my ass!