As a means to explore, biking is slow enough to expose riders to things they’d miss by car but covers enough ground to keep the adventure from stalling.
The birthplace of the rails-to-trails movement, the Midwest offers numerous diverting trails. Built on abandoned railways largely using crushed stone, these routes tend to be flat, attracting both recreationalists — riding gravel, mountain or hybrid rather than road bikes — and those fit enough to do 100-mile “century” spins.
The nonprofit Rails To Trails Conservancy counts more than 2,400 rail trails in the United States. TrailLink, its search engine, lists scores of them in and around Chicago alone ranging from the mile-long Northwestern University lakefill in Evanston to the 61-mile Illinois Prairie Path spanning Cook, DuPage and Kane counties…