North Shore Route

Hi all -- first post...

To make a long story short, I live in the Loop and am looking for a route that goes from the Loop to Libertyville. I biked this route the other weekend with no advance-planning and ended up taking this route:

North on the Lake Shore Path.
When that ends, I rode on the streets through Rogers Park to Evanston.
I rode through Evanston until I got to the Green Bay Trail.
The Green Bay Trail took me all the way to around the Highland Park area, where I got onto the Robert McClory trail (I think that's what it was called).
I think I took that trail until it met up with the east-west North Shore trail (where I took it west). I took this into Libertyville.

With zero plans going into the ride, I think I did a pretty good job of coming up with a decent route.

However, I'm sure there are better ones out there. I know there is the North Shore Century event, but I couldn't find the exact route that they use.

Anyone have any suggestions or advice for the next time I make the ~45 mile trip?

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Permalink Reply by millenial removing Bernie tattoo on July 28, 2008 at 9:34pm

There are three mostly bike path routes to Libertyville.

The first is what you did.

The second is to head west until you hit the Des Plaines River Trail and take that up to Libertyville. Word of caution, the Cook County segment of the trail is natural surface and impassable on a roadbike when muddy. The Lake County segment is nice crushed limestone.

The third is to take the North Branch Trail (starts at Devon and Caldwell) to the Skokie Valley Trail to the Middle Fork Savanna Trail to the east-west North Shore trail.