The Quest for The Dead River

While I was looking for interesting places at Altas Obscura and saw the pictures of the Dead river I decided I would put it on my list of places to check out.

The weather was supposed to be in the mid 50's all day today and I decided to see if I could find it and check out the sights along the way.

I left Crystal Lake and headed Lakemoor to pickup RT120 to Waukegan.

Once I got to the lakeshore I saw signs for the Waukegan Municipal Beach so I decided to check it out.

Doesn't look very beachlike does it? 

 I drove a bit further down the road and came upon the actual beach.  There were tons of kites being flown which was neat.

I didn't want to take too much time as I was afraid the temperature would drop and I'd have a cold ride home so I decided to head out.  On my way up RT137 I came upon this really retro minigolf course attached to a trailer park.

 

Pirate ship holes are the best holes.

Once I got to actual Beach State Park I had no idea where the Dead river was located.  I decided to cruise around and came upon a group of deer just hanging around.

The van next to me started to throw food so I got the video above of the deer coming up to eat.  I also found out my zoom is ridiculously loud when filming video.

This is the beach from the parking lot.

This is a panarama I stitched together in PTGUI click for HUGE!

If you look north up the shore you can see the Zion Nuclear panner plant and some decrepit looking shower facility for the beach.

Your tax dollars at work!  I did want to figure out how to get to the spiral staircase on the roof but didn't see anything from the path and the park police were hanging around so I pulled out my phone and found the dead river described as being on the southern edge of the park.

Once I finally found the parking lot for the hiking area I found this map and realized there was no way I was making it 2 miles hiking in my engineer boots and the Temp had dropped from being by the lake so I was quite cold and decided to head home and see the river another day.

I went back through Waukegan to snap a pic of Jack Benny.  I wanted to take Grand Ave to Gurnee Mills but once I got to Gurnee all the roads heading west were closed due to the Des Plaines river flooding the roadways.  After driving around for a bit I caught RT 41 which though some lanes were under water was still open and I got to Gurnee Mills.

I was shopping for a Ruger GP100 which apparently is made of unobtanium as nowhere can get one and then walked the mall and discovered how crappy it had gotten since I was here last.  I decided to find somewhere to grab dinner but the mall area was just chains so I headed down grand to 45 and back on 120.  Once I got to Grayslake I pulled up yelp and found Panda Chinese Restaurant had pretty good reviews so I decided to check it out.I walked in and ordered crab rangoons and sweet and sour chicken.  The total was $15 which I thought was pretty pricy but it turns out I should have brought an army.

After 10 minutes went by the waitress dropped this in front of me.  The rangoons were amazing and there was at least 10 of them.  I ate till I was stuffed and still had over 1/2 the chicken and 6 rangoons left.  Luckily I had cleaned out my saddlebags and had room for leftovers.

All in all not a bad way to spend a day.

Here's a map of the ride, all told it was ~80 miles.


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