Day 3 - Evanston, through Chicago, and on to Joliet, Illinois

Day 3
October 6, 2016
66.8 miles today (165.8 miles cumulative)
1519 feet of climbing today (3786 feet cumulative)


Today we set forth on the actual Route 66.

We rode from Evanston fifteen miles south to the Chicago Art Institute which is across the street from the official start of Route 66. It was raining lightly. We wondered how we would fare in the wet weather, and how difficult it would be to get through Chicago safely.

We chose to use a route that runs right through Chicago as suggested at the website RideIllinois.org, rather than follow the route suggested by the Adventure Cycling Association which follows Lake Michigan south and then turns westward.

It was a very successful day, and while we did get wet, we never got cold. Before we reached downtown Chicago we cycled through numerous neighbourhoods with gorgeous large homes. I wish we had more photos of them. Here is just one example:

At the Art Institute we did our final checks:

Jean was ready to go:

This is Adams Street, and we will ride it due west to begin:

The sign on the pole declares the start of the route:

We had only five or six blocks of Adams Street with no bike lane, though we used the non-car bus lane with ease. At our first turn south, we found this dedicated path:

We did not take photos of the roads we used, but they were excellent. Ogden and Roosevelt were especially good as bikes were separated from the main traffic for long stretches.

We were soon in the outskirts of Chicago, and rows of homes like these appeared occasionally:

Numerous streets in the suburbs had interesting detached houses, often built somewhat alike, such as these:

Even farther out we came across this huge elevated roadway over a bog or marsh. We took the low road:

This canal (or was it just a portion of a river?) was interesting:

We had no trouble getting to Joliet. We stayed in yet another motel with a laundry, which was great as we had some wet, grit-covered items to clean. We like to let things dry naturally, so our 50' of parachute cord came in handy: