Trip 5: Day 18 (Champaign & Chicago)

No video for this day. I made one, but I talked about nothing for 5 minutes, so I'm not going to post it. I'll post one this evening.

Though it's the "Second City" in the US, Chicago is "the city" in the Midwest. It's where the young, idealistic and optimistic come to start something positive. Through the years, the corruption scandals, the bad winters, and the economic swings, it moans and hisses, squeaks and grinds, just like one of its El trains on a curved track, as more people come and more people, tired of it all or just outright homesick for their smaller Midwestern home, leave. Chicago is not a cheap or easy city in which to live and, therefore, not an easy city in which to make a life. Restaurants and bars are more expensive, making the nightlife that makes the city so attractive somewhat inaccessible to those who eek by. Housing, especially in some of the more desirable neighborhoods on the north side of the city, is scarce and expensive. And while its transit system is generally very good if not excellent for an American city, Chicago is one of the most expensive cities in the country in which to keep a car, with some of the highest gas prices in the country and a lack of parking in its neighborhoods.
But it's definitely nice to visit.

Interstate 57 near Champaign

Outside my motel in Champaign

The day started sunny and a bit chilly, and just colder as I went more north. Here in Downtown Chicago, two blocks from the lake, it's pretty cold in that wind. It's supposed to get warmer.
I left Champaign on the most direct route to the city, Interstate 57, stopping for gas about 30 minutes in. Chicago's fuel prices are, strangely, limited to the immediate area and, when you get 50+ miles away from the city, the prices go back down to roughly normal. In Gilman, I paid $3.59 per gallon, which was about $0.40 cheaper than everything else I saw in Chicago.

Abandoned truck stop in Gilman, IL

After Kanakakee, I got off on US 45 and attempted to cut through the city, partially to do a bit of US 6 visiting. US 6 through Chicagoland is a wide swath of bright concrete dedicated to serving suburban commerce. Sprawl at its worst. The faceless suburban municipalities it goes through did little to quell the surge of stripmalls and spread-out housing developments that characterize the area, leaving US 6 the secondary road to Interstate 80, just to the south.

US 6 here is mostly 159th Street, falling into the nameless grid that swallows up anything running east to west south of Downtown Chicago. I got lunch at an Italian beef place on 159th. For $6, I got a sandwich and the largest pile of fries I've ever gotten in a single order. It was really delicious. Italian beef sandwiches are something that everyone should try at least once when visiting the area.

Southwest Highway near Orland Park

From there, I continued on US 45 north until I reached Southwest Highway. From here, the plan was to go north to the car dealership where I had planned on dropping my car. However, as I got close to this point, I hit 80 miles at a quarter tank. That may not seem great, but I don't think I had filled up all the way, and I had been in stop-and-go traffic for much of the drive. So I plan to see how it goes on the drive to Omaha and, if needed, drop it for the day there. I feel better about the repair shops in Omaha anyway, for whatever reason.
The problem here was that I had already cancelled my park and fly reservation, so I still needed a place to park. The rate at the hotel that I had originally booked had gone up significantly, but there was the Hampton just down the road that I chose instead. The downside was that, instead of being able to walk to the Rosemont CTA stop, I had to take the shuttle to the airport and walk to the O'Hare CTA stop. CTA recently raised their fares when starting at O'Hare. While a trip on the train is $2.25 normally, at O'Hare, it's $5. Yes, that is ridiculous. Vancouver has a similar scheme at its airport, and it's probably going to become more the norm as transit system seek to scrounge for money for improvements and maintenance while not increasing general fares. If anything, you're probably taking up two seats when you come from the airport anyway. But the difference in parking at the Hilton Rosemont was a lot more than $2.75, so I just accepted it.
From here, it was north on Harlem Avenue, Illinois 43. Chicago had a nice welcoming for me: a resurfacing project that had a lane closed and traffic backed up for close to a mile. I just rolled with it; not getting too upset. Through the endless traffic lights, west on the always-clogged Ike (Eisenhower Expressway), then back to US 45 and north to the Hampton.

CTA changed the way their fares work, and you're now required to get this "Ventra" card that looks a lot like a credit card. When you first get it, you get a single-ride, or you can pay a $5 deposit for a new card, which is refundable as soon as you go online and register it, which I did. Online, you can check the balance, look at the use, and add value. It's nice.

Sunset from my hotel room

I went drinking at a place with a good beer selection and got a $5 happy hour flatbread pizza. Just as they are in Indiana, drink happy hours are illegal in Chicago. You cannot price alcohol lower at certain times of the day, nor can you do an "all-you-can-drink" special. But you can price food lower, and you can do packages where, say, you buy a drink and you get a free pizza. And most places in Downtown do something like that.
Then it was the long walk back to the El station to go to Wicker Park to meet a Bloomington friend, who had recently moved here, idealistically. After one more beer, I just went back Downtown and went to bed. Aside from the bars, most of the places in the hipster Wicker Park were shutting down at 9pm, so there did not seem to be much point in sticking around.
 

View from my hotel room