Reader’s Choice
Burnham Greenway

Burnham Greenway, a ten-year-old rail-to-trails conversion in the Cook County Forest Preserve system, alternates between industrial and pastoral scenery. It starts under I-90 just west of Calumet Park at 100th Street and continues two and a half miles past backyards, through prairie, under power lines, and alongside the Eggers Grove Forest Preserve, until you hit a former Nike missile site—now a park—beside Wolf Lake, itself the beneficiary of a $7.25 million ecosystem restoration project that ended last fall. It picks up again a couple miles south of there, near Burnham Prairie at Green Bay and State, for another two-and-a-half-mile stretch, mostly through prairie, winding up at the Green Lake Woods Forest Preserve in Calumet City (and not far from the 235-acre Sand Ridge Nature Center). And the whole thing runs right by the Indiana border, so it’s easy to make a detour across State Line Road—which gives you the right to casually mention at work on Monday that you biked to Indiana over the weekend. fpdcc.com/downloads/bg_trailmap.pdf (not entirely up-to-date, but good enough). —Julia Thiel

Readers’ Choice
Lakefront bike path

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