My first bike daytrip, enjoying the Chicagoland spring warmth (lite touring)

After almost two years living in Chicago, I finally took a day on Tuesday just to go out and ride some of Illinois' wonderful network of mixed use paths!

I hopped on the MD-N train with my bike at the Healy stop in the city and went to Deerfield, moseyed over to the Des Plaines River Trail, rode a relatively small portion of that north a good ways past Libertyville, turned around, did a lap around the pond at Independence Grove including a stop to eat dinner, and then went back to the Libertyville MD-N stop around sunset and hopped off my bike right as the train was just pulling up to the platform (didn't plan that, I was expecting to read my book at the station for a while). I can't upload a video, but the frogs are out in force in the wetlands so it really is spring! And just as I got to Independence Grove the clouds finally cleared and the sun came fully out, so I got to eat my homemade sub in the sun. All told, I did about 30.5mi on the bike including getting to and from the train.

There were four underpasses along this route that were officially closed, but for anyone who might live nearby and want to do the DPRT it was fine on Tuesday. The pictured one was passable no problem on foot in waterproof hiking boots and I really could have ridden it, the one under the Metra tracks was bone dry, and the other two had well-used detour routes to get up to the roads and cross. Crossing Route 60 was a little sketchy but not the worst I've ever done, but the one by Libertyville was near a light and some motorists stopped well in advance of it to wave me across safely.

This was actually my second time out on the long-distance paths, and not even my longest ride, but the other time I made the maniacal decision to ride my ebike from my front door in Logan Square to West Dundee (yes, that's a real town, but at least there is an East Dundee), just over 40mi via the Illinois Prairie Path and Fox River Trail, *to go to a work meeting*, so I enjoyed the ride but I wasn't able to dillydally. This time it was just my fruit-and-nut-powered bike, and dillydallying was the whole point! I'm a backpacker, don't see myself doing bikepacking any time soon despite bikes being my main form of transportation. But I'd love to do more trips like this, especially if I can ever get a decent job and afford to go into town to eat, maybe even book a room somewhere to overnight.