![]() The trip is about 45 miles one way, and will take you through the beautiful towns of Cedarburg, Grafton and Port Washington, where there are plenty of opportunities for rest and refreshment. For another awesome overnight, this one involving camping, you can use almost entirely off-street bike trails to travel from the Amtrak station in Milwaukee to Harrington Beach SP. Harrington Beach SP (combine with train). Total riding distance was about 60 miles. Brompton folding bikes made for especially easy integration with trains, but any bike will work as long as you avoid rush hour train restrictions. If you’re interested in doing a car-free, self-supported day tour, we love this combination of Metra, Prairie Trail, Fox River Trail, Prairie Path, and CTA Blue line to make a complete circle beginning and ending at Jefferson Park. Since we did this trip the first time, we’ve done our best to avoid the nightmarish Glenwood Lansing Rd, opting instead for a network of neighborhood streets directly north of it to cover the last couple of miles between the end of the trail and the brewery.įox River-Prairie Path Loop (combine with trains). For a still ambitious, but shorter (40-mile) alternative, we recommend starting in south suburban Chicago Heights and riding the beautiful Thorn Creek Trail into Indiana. We know there are a lot of folks who ride from Downtown to Three Floyds, but that is quite a long ride, especially if you enjoy some of their liquid refreshments midday. So, …um, we didn’t really mean for this to be a beer-themed post, but here we are. Even if you don’t camp there, we recommend riding down to the River Birch Campground (see the last entry in this post) for a mid-ride bring-along picnic, and truly incomparable views of the widest point of the Mississippi, with glimpses of wading birds, pelicans and bald eagles. We’ve ridden all of it in various sections, and we most heartily recommend starting toward the southern end in Port Byron, and riding to Thomson, where you can camp for the night if you wish to turn your trip into an overnight outing. This trail follows the Illinois side of the Mississippi River for 62 miles between the towns of Rapids City and Savana. If you start and end at the lakefront park (unlike in Chicago, parking is easy and not price-prohibitive), the round trip will be about 28 miles, passing near the Milwaukee Art Museum, Harley Davidson Museum, Urban Ecology Center, Mitchell Park Domes, and more. If you’re not quite up for the magnitude of the above trail, and are up for a more urban day exploration, the Hank Aaron Trail is an awesome way to see many of Milwaukee’s best attractions from the seat of your bike. More info at The Oak Leaf Trail page, trail connections at Milwaukee County Bike Map, and our own Milwaukee Meander ride account. This is a fabulous biking town with many natural and culinary attractions, and we’d be remiss if we did not mention the quintessential summertime Milwaukee tradition -beer gardens- a number of which are easily accessible from various points on the trail. This is a monster 125 mile trail system around Milwaukee, consisting of several sections that can be strung into shorter routes, especially given the numerous intersections with other Milwaukee-area bike trails. More info at Friends of the KalHaven Trail and Michigan DNR. If you begin and end in South Haven, you’ll have the gorgeous Michigan Lakefront to enjoy, or if you choose Kalamazoo, you’ll have -beer. You’ll pass through towns, woodlands and farmland. You can ride this hard-pack, mostly unpaved linear rail-trail in either direction for a spectacular 70-mile day-long excursion. Spanning 34 miles between Michigan towns of South Haven and Kalamazoo, the KalHaven trail figures prominently as a top tourist destination to the Southwest Michigan region. ![]()
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