I was a little concerned that I’d get to Chain O’ Lakes State Park “too early”. Sure it was just 140 miles on the map, but without a lot of scenic places along the way for me to stop and gawk at, I might just keep riding and get there early afternoon. Especially since I’m still on Eastern Time and thus got a pretty early start.
Not to worry. I got to the park at about 6pm Central Time, which makes for nearly 10 hours on the road. Of course that’s because I did stop along the way, and took plenty of time when I did.
The roads got more to my liking as I got to the north of Chicago proper. Around Lake Zurich were some pretty nice ones … If not for the construction backups. Due to a few outright closures I relented and just took US-12 for the last 20ish miles. I try to avoid those kinds of letter-number roads, and this one was a bit of a racetrack, but not too bad. Ironically, US-12 was also the road that Indiana Dunes is on. But there’s no way I was going to stay on it the whole way.
I had an annoyance as I was setting up the tent at the campground: only 6 stakes instead of 7. I can’t figure out how I lost one. But apparently I did. It’s more annoying in principle than in practice; the tent is pretty stable without it. (In fact it can get by with just 3 stakes, or just 2 if you don’t need the rain fly.)
On the other hand, I got lucky looking for a place to eat supper. I used an app called AroundMe to show me the nearest restaurants, all of which would require a good 6+ miles of backtracking from my camp site. Except that when I asked the app to tell me the actual distance to one of them, it said just 3 miles. It turns out there’s a back entrance to the park… sort of. I checked it out, and it’s blocked by a chained gate. But with a pedestrian opening, just big enough to push a scooter through. 🙂
So I’m at the Route 12 Bar & Grill, which is exactly what it sounds like. But in addition to an assortment of burgers and other sandwiches, they have a nice array of draft beers, from Bud Light to Guiness to several craft brews. I’m having Misfit IPA, which … I am too thirsty to judge objectively. 🙂 and a grilled BBQ chicken sandwich with tater tots on the side.
