The Lake Michigan Circle Tour is an approximately 1,100 mile loop around Lake Michigan. It can be completed either clockwise or counter-clockwise. We’ve driven it twice, once in 1993 for our honeymoon and again in 2013 for our 20th anniversary. Both of those were clockwise loops. This time I’m riding counter-clockwise with the start coinsiding with this year’s Le Tour de Shore.
This is my fifth time riding Le Tour de Shore. It supports a good cause and is the most cost-effective bike trip I’ve seen. There are something like 650 participants this year. Each year I’ve done the tour I’ve added on to it somehow. At first, I just started from home and took an extra day. Then I started in Wisconsin and took an extra two days. Then I started in Iowa and took an extra six days.
Last year I was planning to ride to Mackinac Island but ended up needing to finish a coding project that kept me from going further than Michigan City. So, with a little luck, this year will go all the way around and back home again.
Palatine to Chicago
Day 1: 39 miles, 500 feet of elevation gain. The weather was a bit cool and hazy / overcast with wind off the lake.
There are shorter ways to get downtown than the path I take, but those require a lot of time in bike lanes on major streets. I prefer forest preserves and bike paths whenever possible, so my route is a bit longer. But it’s also much safer and prettier. Today I got to see a deer along the trail and was able to stop for late lunch along the lakefront just south of Belmont Harbor. It’s a nice route, and highly recommended for anyone coming from the northwest suburbs to downtown.
I stayed at the Central Loop Hotel, four blocks from Michigan Avenue and about eight blocks from Buckingham Fountain. It seemed to be a nice hotel, better than any of the others I’ve tried downtown in the last few years. There is a food hall / food court nearby and I had a double-cheeseburger, fries, and a local beer for dinner. Everything was good.
I then walked down to the fountain and took a picture. On the way back I noticed a significant police presence. An anti-ICE protest had gone down Michigan Avenue about 15 minutes before I arrived. As I walked back to the hotel, I ended up just one block over from the protest. Lot’s of police, but I didn’t notice any disruptions otherwise. What I did notice besides the police were a large number of Streets and Sanitation snow plow trucks completely loaded with either sand or salt standing by ready to block either traffic or protesters as needed.
