Poundin' the super slab from Detroit to Chicago is hardly a challenging task when abord a dresser.   But what fun is it to stare at the same damn bumpers and billboards for 5 hours and not see a single damn thing else along the way?

Not very fun.  And not very challenging, either.

So to give myself something to wrestle with, I ditched the geezer windshield of mine and headed down the back roads for the 650 mile round trip to Chi town.  Heck, I'm young guy, I can handle that wind and crap on my anything-but-geezer-glide Road King.  

Right?

Well just an hour into my journey, the 70mph wind resistance prompted a major neck and back ache, and I found myself suddenly forced to deal with the aftermath of a shattered pair of glasses due to a menacing rock.  Which left my complaining ass envying that Goldwing trike humming down the road.

For a just second.







I departed from my post in Ann Arbor Michigan to head along US-12, also known as the Sauk Trail.  With stretches of it dating back to the early 1800’s, this original footpath was used as a fur-trading route in earlier days.  As the automobile era boomed and travel between the two Midwestern cities heightened—you guessed it—a major interstate was slated to take over M-12’s duties.  In 1964, I-94 became the principle roadway connecting Detroit to Chicago, and left M-12 officially designated a “historic route”.  

Which, for anybody who has a motorcycle and some free time on their hands, spells a road trip.

Within minutes of leaving the cosmopolitan college town of Ann Arbor, M-12 transformed seamlessly into gentle rolling hills scattered with century old farmhouses.   The smell of horseshit was a welcoming replacement to the smog and smoke I had previously experienced getting out of the city (leave it to a biker to appreciate the smell of horseshit).  But some of these farm scenes weren’t exactly the kind you see in glossy coffee table books, or on other glitzier historic routes.







This kind of grit was exactly what I had hoped to see along this road-least-traveled. When the interstate took over in the 60’s, this route became severely disconnected from what used to be its lifeblood, giving it an almost “route 66 of the Midwest” feel to it.  The towns scattered along M-12 weren’t in too bad of shape themselves, but the weirdness definitely filled out the stretches in between.








When I peered through the dust-covered windows of this dragons and ghosts store (you read right-- check out the letters on the windows!), the dilapidated shop looked like a cross between your grandpa’s garage, and the worst carnival prize rack you’ve ever seen.








Other, more bustling road side attractions drew in the tourists like lemmings, as seen here with this state of the art mini-golf course.





And even though I went and looked “up town”, there were no liverbests to be found at this boarded up eatery.












This barn possessed an awkward sense of charm in the midst’s of its own degradation.  To think that in earlier days I might have been shoed away for snooping in these places, it only gave them a stronger sense of importance to me.  While I was there, they belonged to nobody but me and my camera.








On the states west side, I stopped for some glamour shots along this retired camel back bridge just outside of Mottville.  It was the second incarnation of such bridges to cross the St. Joseph River, with the first one  (now a mere pile of rocks resting under the rivers surface) dating back to the fur trading days of the early 1800’s





Just inside Indiana, I dodged the inevitable downpour that the clouds had been threatening me with all day long.  I pulled my bike under an overhang that boasted “the best burgers in the state” or country, or some other false claim like that.  Funny how it’s the places that “claim” to be the best, that really are closer to being the worst.









Also just south of the Indiana state line, I spotted this impressively patriotic carmengia decked out in stars and… more stars.






Complete with a flowerbed in the front trunk.  God Bless America, I softly said to myself.


As I wound my way along the lower rim of Lake Michigan, I could fell the Midwestern farm scene disappearing from my sight as the post-industrial bog of Gary Indiana seeped in front of my handlebars.  At that point, I was prepared to wrestle with stoplights and urban sprawl all the way into downtown Chicago, but the old Sauk Trail had one more surprise in store for me.


Prompted by a small brown sign, I pulled off the road into the parking lot for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  I had somehow managed to overlook this little green blurb on the map, but was fully prepared to take a scenic break before my last push into the city.  






Look at this hill.  I’ve thrown rocks higher than this hill.  So needless to say, I didn’t think anything of it.  After hours of sitting on the back of my hog, I jumped and started my mad dash up its slope.

But running up a sand slope is night and day compared to running up a grass slope.  For every two steps I took, it pushed be back three.  This hill made me its ***  As the incline leveled out at the top, I took a few steps and crumpled to the ground.

It was the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing a heart attack.  My heart was pounding through my chest, every piece of clothing felt like it was made of spandex and wool, and I was counting the seconds until things would just get blurry and I’d fade away.  This lasted all of five minutes, which seemed like an eternity, and every second was as agonizing as the one before it.

I ripped off several excessively warm layers, gulped down the remnants of a discarded water bottle I found, and gathered my wits.   And thanked God I didn’t die, because the view was too spectacular for me to get that far and croak.












Check out the largest sand penis east of the Mississippi! (However, I cannot claim authorship for this beach scratching—I don’t’ think I could have made it back up the hill if I went down that far).


As I mounted the road king for the 80 mile home stretch, the sun was setting and I was thankful to be back on the road.  All I had to do now was follow the signs saying “12”, and I’d find myself cruising the magnificent mile into Chicago… right?

As I battered through the remnants of rush hour traffic, I kept my eyes pealed for that “12” sign, and followed it religiously with the faith traveling by the North Star.  I hadn’t had to pull out a map thus far, and wanted desperately to cruise this single road from major city to major city.

But dusk was upon me quicker than I had anticipated, and before I knew it the city lights grew less and less, the griminess of south Chicago seemed to clean itself up, and the street lights were nowhere to be found.  Which is always a bad sign, if you are aiming to hit a downtown area.

I pulled over and yanked out that map, only to find that 12 re-routes around the perimeter of Chicago, and I was some 35 miles outside of the down town area.






As I hightailed towards the freeways on-ramp, I dodged a woman applying eyeliner in her rear view mirror, attempting to merge on the freeway and run me over like a bug.   Which made me thankful for smaller, historic roads like the Sauk Trail.

Freeway travel is all too distracting, and sharing the road with folks who “just want to get there” defeats the purpose of riding a motorcycle in the first place. The towns and the people along the Sauk trail, along with the grotesque buildings and bizarre roadside attractions, made my slow-roasted traveling worth the extra effort.  In this day and age when speed and efficiency are practically considered a given, it is humbling to remind ourselves of the roads that led up to such conveniences.  

So if you find yourself buzzing from Detroit to Chicago, or vise versa, take a side step down this historic trail—I know you won’t regret it.  But bring an extra pair of sunglasses, just in case those damn rocks do a number to your shades…  

I'll be heading out to eastern Pennsylvania this coming weekend, so keep your eyes pealed for a write up about my adventure along the southern coast of lake Erie and through the Appalachian mountains, with a return stop planned for Toronto!