One of my favorite roads that I’ve ridden forever is Spring Creek Road in Barrington Hills, even though it’s not one of McHenry County’s designated “scenic roads.”
The road is the first east-west throughway in the village north of Lake-Cook Road, stretching 3.5 miles before it becomes Highland Avenue in Algonquin on the west for 1.5 miles.
I ride the full length of Spring Creek Road starting on the east end from Ridge Road. I always quickly find the scenery soothing, even if it’s Plum Tree Road on the north end of the village that gets the “scenic road” sign. The quiet Spring Creek Road, with little traffic, is good for casual bicyclists and serious cyclists, and maybe even families who live within the town or Algonquin.
It’s horse farms that dominate the east end of Spring Creek Road, and large homes (very large homes) sit among them — this is Barrington Hills, after all, with minimum 5-acre lots. There’s no shortage of mature trees, either.
Spring Creek Road, keeping to the village’s name, also is hilly, and it doesn’t take long to come upon the first significant one. Going west, however, means you go down it, and that’s fun — it’s not hard to reach 30 mph.
After the hill, the land opens up even more and you see the pastures behind trees, including weeping willows, that continue to line the road and even property lines. The driveways before the mansions may be elegantly gated.
The hills roll until one long, tough one comes beside a big home seeming to sit in a forest on the left. You’ll need to shift down.
The tree coverage increases as you go west until it makes canopies in several places. The estates may or may not be horse farms.
Lucky for us, starting at Moate Lane, Spring Creek Road sports new asphalt. Now you can glide down the hills.
West of Braeburn Road (which features an exciting downhill if you head north on it), you pass more open fields maybe of just meadow, though trees of all sorts are ever-present.
Soon the horse or other fields return especially on your right. In season, you can catch a sea of sunflowers. Eventually Haegers Bend Road arrives and the new asphalt ends, but Spring Creek Road is still in fine shape.
And that ends Barrington Hills as Spring Creek Road turns into Highland Avenue in Algonquin. You’ll find more fields on the right before suburbia resumes in full. A bike trail zigzags through the town while you gain a painted 4-foot shoulder, and there still are plenty of trees.
For the homestretch, the shoulder ends while the path switches to the south side, and the trees increase again. You soon curve left, heading toward the ride’s finish at Algonquin Road/Route 62. (That’s not to be confused with the other Algonquin Road to the north closer to the Fox River; Braeburn Road would take you to that.)
Here’s how much of the 5-mile ride looks.
Spring Creek Road and Highland Avenue ultimately take you to busy downtown Algonquin; if you want to proceed to it, it’s best to take the little sidewalk along Route 62. Or you can take the walk only to River Road, another favorite of mine that will send you back around the north end of Barrington Hills, including that Plum Tree Road.
Especially on weekends, you’ll find plenty of cyclists; Barrington Hills has long been kind of a cyclists’ utopia, if you didn’t already know. That doesn’t always make residents happy, so pay heed to the “single file” signs seen on Spring Creek and the roads to and from it.
Going through Barrington Hills takes me on another favorite road, Rawson Bridge Road, and around Island Lake, Port Barrington and Lake Barrington.
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