BowtieGuy3

Anyone around Cook County, IL (This means you Chicago Metro, NW-IN, S-WI, SW-MI) and all others who would come here...

So all of you around the Illinois area (esp. around Cook County) know our, deep profound fondness for the Forest Preserves. Well I seem to have stumbled upon quite a few areas that are not Forest Preserves per se, but county property alongside a few of our highways in areas where there is like F-all around. There were 4x4/quad tracks I ran across one day, so I decided to explore. (I know, naughty me, county land, alone, I get it...If it makes ya feel better, I whacked a rock pretty good w/ the '98...)

So this leads me to thinking of writing a proposal about how the county could be making extra $$$ by opening these lands to the off-road community for a small license fee, based on residency, and license length (i.e. daily, weekend, weekly, month, 3/4/6/12 months, etc). I do know that there are several Forest Preserves around that you can run your snowmobiles, so they can't be all up on the "No Motorized Vehicles" all the time.

So before I decide if I wanna do this and get all up into this thing, any thoughts on it? I mean it wouldn't be like no off-road park like Cliff's or the Badlands, but it would just be simple trails, and being county property, picnics and stuff I'm guessing...

jpdocdave

i say go for it. i'm 45 mins. north of the city, but you know how our state is. and liberals love to say we destroy land, and are always against ohv. good luck, we need more land.

REWSTER

ill sign it i think i know were your talking about i take all those back forst perserve roads when im driving at work less trafic on them and think about taking the jeep over there all the time, we think why not but the cops will think otherwise

i think the snowmobilers and 4 wheelers do it illeagaly though and prolly tear up more then we would in our jeeps

REWSTER

also if you do it ill take a copy around when i drive and ask every offroader i see to sign

caged

is there not an organization to speak on the full sized off road vehicles behalf in the area?

here, in ontario, we have the OF4WD. or Ontario Federation of 4 Wheel Drive enthusiasts, if you will. they are kinda like the OFSC which is the Ontario Federation Snowmobile Clubs. only with far less money.
membership is only 10 bux for a local jeep club member, or 25 for an individual member. included in the membership for of4wd, the member gets an additional 10000 dollars of offroad liability insurance as a rider with the drivers vehicle policy.

the of4wd is an organization that will loby for us jeepers in ontario. they are a not for profit organization, so they really don't have the money that the ofsc has, but however it is a group of well educated off roaders who put countless hours of volunteer time to open and loby against trail closures. not easy tho, we win some and lose some.

every year we have an awesome weekend of offroading put on by the of4wd called CampNL, with all proceeds going to a local charity, thus improving our image in the area helping our fight for our hobby.

BowtieGuy3

well this is Chicago, and the closect most people get to the great outdoors is the Chicago Rat (which I might add, is no small animal) in their alleys. Other than that, the burbs is rabbits, squirrels, and the raccoons & possums that murder your trash cans. Although I see the occasional skunk, fox and coyote around here by me...

The snowmobiliers have a weird set up, they can sled over at places like Turtlehead, but they can't go anywhere else around...
And the Quads have torn the crap out of the place, that's how I saw it then decided to go poking around...