A quick post tonight, as we enjoyed dinner with niece Claire Ragen and her family, so it is late. Claire’s husband Bill joined me for over 50 miles of the ride today. It was great to have his company as we worked our way through the southeast suburbs of Chicago, which are his old stomping grounds.
Chicago had always been a bit of a conundrum as I was planning the trip. Though I briefly considered going through downtown, it didn’t really make sense to try that on a bicycle on a weekday. And as for getting the RV through crowded city streets, I wouldn’t put Toni through that. So I planned to circumnavigate Chicago to the extent I could without adding too many miles to the trip.
I chose a route that cut close to the Chicago suburbs, but I hoped to avoid much harrowing riding. I couldn’t be sure how successful I was until I was actually on the road. The route more or less worked.
I had to work through some rather industrial sections of Joliet.
There were also a few harrowing roads where I was competing for scarce real estate with large trucks, but I passed that after a few miles. There was also a stretch of relatively busy road with fairly narrow shoulders, but Bill and I managed to get through that without incident.
The bulk of the ride today was on beautiful, well maintained bicycle trails that followed wooded areas through the suburbs, and finally let us out into the Indiana countryside, about 25 miles east of Gary.
Even though I enjoy visiting Chicago, it is a relief to be past it on this trip.
We even got to a point in Indiana where we started seeing barns again. Here those are.
Chesterton, IN
Chesterton, IN
Michigan City, IN
The technical stuff:
Joliet, IL to Michigan City, IN
88.2 miles
1,200 feet of climbing (The elevation function on both Garmin and Ride with GPS are acting up and this is an estimate).
Average speed 13.3 miles per hour
Weather: Foggy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. Temperatures from 60 in the morning to mid-70s in the afternoon. Winds calm.
You can see the entire route to date here.