October 11, 2015: US 12/20/41 run under the Chicago Skyway right at the Indiana/Illinois state line; 12/20 split a short distance later. If you think I plan to try following all of US 41 through Chicagoland, there’s going to be LSD involved.
In October 2015, I took on one of the larger challenges for a highway completionist outside of the Northeast — US 20 through the Chicago metro area — and it crushed expectations. Here’s an expansion of a blog post from 2015:
East Dubuque to I-39, part of which remains two-lane, was 100 miles done in two hours. The next segment took 45 minutes for 35 miles. But the last that I tried, IL 72 to IL 50, started in the middle of the afternoon and ended after rush hour, when I had to throw in the towel. It took 2 hours and 40 minutes to go 54 miles.
The return leg, to make up for what I missed, happened on a nice Sunday, making for probably the best conditions possible. It still took nearly an hour and a half to follow 20 from I-65’s north end at Gary to US 45 at Mannheim Road, with some overlap of the previous.
In sum, in two trips, it took four and a half hours of city driving to finish my 80-mile gap of US 20 between I-39 and I-65. Average speed: 24 mph.
US 14 in Illinois, which ends on the north side of Chicago, is 70 miles long. It took 1 hour and 50 minutes on a Sunday to cover the first 50 (average speed: 28 mph).
Last July, covering 20 through Toledo, Ohio, between I-75 and US 23 clocked in at 45 minutes for 13 miles (in the rain, not counting a food and photo stop).
Way way back, 20’s routing via Mannheim and 95th Street was a medium bypass of Chicago (US 30 was the outer one). Now it’s smack in the middle of things, and remains the middle for dozens of miles in both directions. But only the foolish, and the completionists, take the challenge today.
I’m glad I’m able to rack up the miles on US highways that pass through Iowa fairly easily, which gives me patience for some of the tough gaps. But man, there’s a reason we have the interstate system.