To see the day's Map and Elevation Graph look here: Cycling map and data link (hover on 'Map' button in the upper left corner and click on Terrain).
We start riding at 8:20am and the roads are dry but there's still standing water in places from the massive amount of rain this area has received recently. We ride to a nearby service station for a quick breakfast. The first few blocks on a bike path along Half Day Road led us to standing water that we had to portage around. This is the beginning of many miles on bike paths today. It's quite humid but very cloudy, sometimes misty, and some fog as we get closer to the lake. The temperature is in the high 60s.
After Half Day Road we get on the Skokie Valley Trail.
Skokie Valley Trail
We get on roads for a bit (designated bike friendly) and ride through some affluent lakeshore neighborhoods. We come to the cool Bahna'i House of Worship temple.
Bahna'i House of Worship
Soon we reach Northwestern University and this area has a nice protected bike lane. We see buses marked as 'MOVE IN' and lots of students getting on and off. For us, this seems late for classes to be starting. Kids these days sure have it easy. After leaving the campus area we lose the protected bike lane and ride on Sheridan Road in Evanston, IL. This road has 'sharrows' which makes this a bike boulevard. (Sharrow is a portmanteau word that comes from "shared arrow" which is an icon on the road - two arrows followed by a bike - that indicates bikes are common. Don't you be fooled though as many car drivers just don't see these icons.)
We soon enter Chicago proper on Clark Street and see this interesting mural.
Constellation-themed mural in Rogers Park Neighborhood
It's not exactly Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
We ride on streets for a bit and then get on the Lakefront Trail which has really nice bike and pedestrian trails. They are really smooth and well marked, and we will be on it for 18 miles. We also get our first view of Lake Michigan.
First Lake Michigan View
There are several other riders on this cloudy and a little foggy Monday morning. We cruise along until we get to Navy Pier. Here they make us walk our bikes. Lots of construction going on at Navy Pier. We search out Cloud Gate (locals call it The Bean) in Millennium Park. We pass by the J Pritzker Pavilion along the way.
The Bean is somewhat mesmerizing. It's all reflective and gives you the expanded feeling of old amusement park curved mirrors.
Reflection in The Bean
When in Rome, do as the Romans do: selfie
The Cloud Gate sculpture draws a large number of tourists. Then we have a nice lunch at the Park Grill.
The Bean reflects us and buildings on Michigan Ave
Jim made a short video that gives a better overall perspective of Cloud Gate (AKA The Bean). You can see Jim's reflection as he is walking along making this video. Warning: this video might not work on all combinations of operating systems and web browsers.
Cloud Gate Video
We ride over to Crown Fountain.
Crown Fountain 1
The creator says it is a modernization of the gargoyle theme with water spewing from skyscraper like sculptures that are made out of glass bricks. Each skyscraper has a video of someone's face and water shoots out of their mouth.
Crown Fountain 2
Next we head to Buckingham Fountain.
Buckingham Fountain
Buckingham Fountain was dedicated in 1927 and has color light shows in the evening. Millennium Park is really cool and we wish we could spend more time here.
However, it's time to get back on the Lakefront Trail as we are only half way to our destination. Fortunately a nice tailwind is blowing and the path remains smooth and well marked. We make good time all the way to the end. Now we get on US 41 for a short distance and then get on the Burnham Greenway bike trail and find this monument to Nike Missiles as we come across the C 44 Nike missile site. It was one of about 20 Chicago area sites where Nike Ajax surface to air missiles were placed to defend Chicago and its vital steel industry during the Cold War. Who knew there were monuments to weapons of mass destruction?
Nike Missile Monument
Soon we get into Indiana and find that Hammond's roads are pretty rough and a bit busy. This area is still part of Chicagoland and there are factories, bad roads, and some sense of deterioration. Next we come to Gary Indiana. Gary is named after a former chairman of the US Steel Corporation. Gary had a population of 180,000 in 1960 and 80,000 in 2010. One third of all homes in Gary are unoccupied. We ride all the way through Gary from west to east. There are many places that are rundown or abandoned. To save money the city turned off many street lights and put up stop signs.
A stoplight in Gary, IN replaced by a stop sign with an Amazon Prime warehouse in the background
Gary has many traditional and storefront churches. People, including a bicycle rider, seem friendly and wave to us as we ride by. Some parts of Chicago's South Side and Gary have very negative reputations. After going through some of these neighborhoods at a slow pace on a bicycle, we realized that the reality is more complex than the stereotypes. We're glad that we had the opportunity to get some sense of what these places are like. Experiencing this from a bicycling perspective made it feel more real.
After Gary we ride east on some of the worst roads of this journey. We head north and then get on US 20 that takes us to our hotel in Portage, IN.