On Saturday, we headed out with some friends to check out the new trails at Ulrich Wildlife Preserve in Morton. Having grown up in Morton, I never knew about this park until a couple of years ago when I saw there were some geocaches placed here. I never made it out there to find them because the fact that it was just woods without any trails unnerved me a little bit. I didn’t want to get lost in a place I wasn’t familiar with. Fast forward to 2020 and the Morton Park District has decided to start developing a trail system after years of talking about it.
When you arrive, it is located at the dead end of Turtle Creek Trail. Right now, there is not a parking lot or anything, so you just park in the street in front of people’s houses.
As you head into the park, right away you see a trail, so we headed in that direction. There are not any maps or trail markers at this time, so you basically need to figure it out for yourself. It seems a little daunting, but since I was recording our route in AllTrails, it wasn’t that bad.
The trails are pretty established. The park reminds me a lot of Dirksen or Forest Park. All forested, however, it borders a creek, and that made for some fun playtime for the toddlers.
The park also has some fun “obstacle” course activities that the kids enjoyed. Nothing huge, but for a toddler, it was pretty cool.
They also had some really nice bridges and boardwalks that were built this summer.
There were a few hills, but nothing crazy and my friend’s toddler who isn’t quite a year older than Dillon was able to walk the entire route that we did. Dillon did a little bit at the end.
We didn’t see a lot of wildlife outside of some squirrels, birds and chipmunks, but we did see some pretty cool fungi.
Overall, this was a really nice park and I would like to try to make it back out there soon to check out more of it. Hopefully in the next few weeks when the leaves start changing.
My fitbit said we did around 1.3 miles. I was recording it in AllTrails, but accidentally turned it off while we were playing at the creek.
Thanks for hiking with Dillon and I!