There is a very pretty building in the city of Chicago located at 2550 North Lakeview Avenue. The building is called Lincoln Park 2550, but only because that name sounds better than the other one, and it applies a neighborhood name that sells with a bit more vigor, and for a tad more money. I’ve been in this building, and I like it very much. It is new and fancy, and there are game rooms and movie rooms and meeting rooms. I’m betting one of those rooms is hosting a St. Patrick’s day party this weekend, but I don’t know quite which room. There aren’t many expressly Irish movies, unless you count Far and Away, so I’m betting the party isn’t in the movie room. Likely in that pretty space behind the lobby. It looks out over the community lawn area.
From this building, you can drive in many directions, except straight East for any significant amount of time. To the West, you can drive. To the South, too. North is obvious, because when it comes to a weekend retreat most Midwesterners have a pre-set disposition to drive that direction. If you left on a Friday afternoon and drove due west, in 73.27 miles you’d find yourself pulling into the town of Malta, Illinois. The first house in Malta was built by a fella named Orput, which means If I had been Mr. Orput I would have named Malta Orputville, but even so. Malta seems like a nice little town, and the good news is that their water boil decree was lifted last week. While Malta may be a nice place, it is to vacation homes what I am to ice dancing.
If you found yourself in need of a southerly retreat, but you wished to only drive south for a ways before turning to the East a bit and then more to the North, a 74.22 mile drive would find you in New Buffalo, Michigan. That sounds awful nice, but perhaps I shouldn’t have added the word nice. On your trip, mile 33 will put you in the heart of Gary, Indiana, which is a good thing. Living in 2550 Lincoln Park there isn’t a lot of danger, or a lot of blight, so it’s good to see these things once in a while. There are lots of advertisements for fireworks and strip clubs here, so your children will get a wonderful education on the ways of this easterly world. Once you get the New Buffalo, you’ll be delighted to find that the town is likely closed. It does that a lot if it isn’t summer.
If you drove South, and then didn’t turn to the East, 79.91 miles later you’d be in Herscher. This is a wonderful little town, though I only know that because their website declares it as fact. It’s a close knit community, which is always a good thing. Unless you live in Lincoln Park and you drive there for a weekend, because you are not really part of this fabric, and you’re going to have a hard time working your way into things. Herscher also doesn’t appear to have a lake, because if a town has a great lake, they put it on their website. There are tractors on this website, and as a proud owner of a John Deere tractor, I do appreciate fine American craftsmanship (Hecho En Mexico), but weekend after weekend of tractoring is really just work.
You could drive North from 2550, either up 41 or 94, or you could be especially unique and drive up 12 if, for no other reason, than because you enjoy a good traffic back up in Lake Zurich, and in 74.09 miles you could be basking in the eternal glow of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Your drive will not feature any blight, and you will, at no point, be in any routine danger. In fact, if you chose to drive 94, you’d be surrounded by the corn and soybean fields of northern Illinois in thirty minutes time. You could take a detour through Bristol and pass near the Pritzker’s remarkable horse farm. Or you could just go north to highway 50, and turn to the West as so many people have done for so many years. You’d drive through a few small towns along this route, and if you’re wise you’d stop at River Valley Farms for some mushrooms, and then again at Lake Geneva Country Meats for some Wisconsin steaks.
We have a lake in our town, and that’s why we feature it on our website. It’s pretty big, it’s wonderfully blue, and the area around the lake isn’t so bad either. I guess some people wouldn’t like roads that twist around a deeply deciduous shoreline, and I suppose not everyone thinks a sunset sail over deep, clean waters is a fun way to end a Friday. Those people will likely be driving South, or West, or South and then East, because those who end up driving north are the truly discerning, and if we were all discerning then the Gary gas stations wouldn’t do nearly as much business.