Planning a Midwest road trip with a friend - help and thoughts?

Run at Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin,and in Lake Geneva. Make your way up to the Fox Trail in Green Bay, then make your way across the state and over to Minneapolis/Twin Cities. You will find endless possibilities of trails/lakes to run on and around in the Twin Cities. You could even go on up to Duluth then, too, which also has great trails. Can run in a lot of great places in Wisconsin and Minnesota alone. Great getaway from the horrible traffic (and drivers!) in the Chicago area.

Well, when are you going?

If it's not at the same time as the Sturgis Bike Rally, I would plan a trip to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills Area.

About 14 hours to Mt. Rushmore from Chicago - 934 miles each way, so a bit further than you planned, but worth it. Make sure to see Custer State Park.

If you were more adventurous and had more time and gas money, I'd send you to The Grand Tetons too.

Up Lake Michigan...

Green Bay-- Packers' Lambeau Field Tour, several trail options (esp. like Reforestation Camp trails just north of Green Bay)

http://greenbayareatrails.com/

Loop around Michigan's Upper Peninsula-- via 41 (Marinette-Menominee, Escanaba) one way and 141 (Norway-Kingsford-Iron Mountain area) on another. The latter has has a nice recreation area around Fumee Lake Natural Area:

http://fumeelakes.org/

Go to eastern end of UP to see Mackinac Island (ferry trip) and the Mac. bridge spanning to Lower Peninsula. If you want to cross (toll), Mackinaw City on the other side has an historic fort.

On the way there / back, you could stop at places like Big Spring near Manistique. Definitely detour to spend the better part of the day at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore:

http://www.nps.gov/piro/index.htm

Lots of little road waysides to stop for lunches and national forest lands for camping/dirt-road runs if you want.

A nice guide to Upper Michigan for details on what I've thrown out and other things to check out:

http://www.hunts-upguide.com/

The term "flyover states" exists for a reason.

Do a lap around Lake Superior. Check out the Terry Fox Memorial. For runners, that is an emotional site.

stay with me n my girlfriend in chicago---we will go out,get drunk and who knows what else

head to the pacific.

the midwest in the summer time? lol sounds hot humid and awful good luck

The above poster had a good suggestion about the UP. The scenery is unbelievable there during the summer. A couple fun stops could be Taquamanon Falls, Kitchee-Ippi springs, and the Pictured Rocks Lakeshore (as was mentioned). I think there's a road race at Pictured Rocks during the summer too, which could be something for you to do.

The Gunflint Trail, a road, out of Grand Marais, MN is very very very beautiful. On your way there you can see Duluth, feels like San Fran, and many miles of Superior shores. You can even hit the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, one of America's gems. In all honesty these are some of the coolest places in the country.

Don't miss them.

I like what YooperMan said about the Lake Michigan trip. You could also stop at Indiana Dunes, Notre Dame, and St. Joseph, which are all worth seeing if you haven't before.

Another trip would be:

Madison - great running, drinking, lakes

WI Dells - go on a monster waterslide or something? maybe an awful tourist trap, idk

Twin Cities - lots to do. Run the Mpls lakes/rivers with the masses or hit Ft Snelling or Hyland Lake parks for some seclusion in the city

(hit Tobies bakery in Hinckley on the way up north to Jay Cooke)

Jay Cooke State Park - near Duluth, great scenery and running

Duluth - good downtown bars, hit Club Saratoga

Hayward WI - fishing and trails

Green Bay - trails and Lambeau

Milwaukee - Brewers game at Miller Park

Good places to camp all around (except maybe in Milwaukee), so you can do it on the cheap.

Thanks for all the replies so far! Reading through everything now. We are doing the Midwest since we thought a road trip would be fun, his car gets good mileage, and I just don't have any plans for a vacation via airplane this summer.

Not exactly sure on when we are doing this yet, maybe the end of June or the middle of July. Probably leave on a Monday morning and come back to Chicago Sunday night or so. I just figured we would take a week but it could be more or less. Still want to keep the costs as low as possible since we wanna do this to have fun but there's school and stuff to pay for.

We were thinking of staying in a cheap hotel/motel each night, I figure rooms are $50 or so but I haven't looked into details. Also does my 1000-1500 mile round trip sound feasible or would we probably need to drive more?

Definitely want to create a great planned out route that will let us keep traveling onwards instead of doing anything silly like looping back and wasting time and gas (ie: going to indiana then cutting back across to iowa).

I thought about Mt. Rushmore but as you said that's 900+ miles one way and I went to South Dakota and saw it when I was younger already. I don't need any amazing landmarks, but it would be nice to see a few. I just skimmed responses so far so I'm going to look into what was mentioned and the suggested running spots.

Thanks guys

Yooper Man wrote:

Up Lake Michigan...

This is a sweet trip. Up to the Yoopers, back down along the west coast of Michigan -- perfect!

I like the running suggestions in Minn and Mich I'll look into those. Also doing a Lambeu field tour and catching a Brewers game sounds like great ideas, my friend would definitely be up for that he's a baseball nut. Any other landmarks per say that we could visit? I don't want to center this TOO much on running because that will be time I am without my friend but I definitely want to include it for myself since I'm taking the opportunity to travel around and get away from the city streets. I guess when I'm running my friend would probably be chilling or checking something out locally so it's fine.

A combination of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan sounds good. I am going to try and figure out how many miles I'm looking at.

We could also go the Indiana, Ohio route, but that wasn't mentioned much. I suppose deciding which way we start traveling will decide most of our trip. I am going to do more research, thanks again Yooper and others for great suggestions.

Also with camping, I've never done so myself and don't really know how it works. Is it cheaper than getting a hotel every night? Do you pay a park and then just set up for the night?

Indiana Dunes is bomb.

There's free parking at Porter Beach (supposed to be for in state but no one EVER checks) park there and head east towards the state park entrance. Trail 9 and 10 are some of my favorites, gets a little hilly but worth it. Probably should take a quick glance at a map but you'll go through campgrounds before you get into the park and can get anywhere from 6-16 miles without doing much repeating.

Also in the area:

Bailly Homestead and Chellberg Farm

Cowles Bog

Should be a good 45-55 min drive from Chicago depending on what time of day you leave!

If you don't want to back-track, you could-- after doing an Upper Peninsula loop, go back down through mid-Wisconsin (US 51/I39) or Minnesota (I35) to hit I94 & I90 back home.

The former would get you to some nice towns such as Rhinelander, Wausau, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Dells-- as well as Madison mentioned up-thread. The latter has lots of touristy options (water parks/can get day passes at many w/o having to pay for waterpark hotels $$$)/duck boat rides/etc..

Going further NW could get you great UP and NW WI towns and sites such as Marquette, Copper Country (Houghton-Hancock main cities), Porcupine Mountains (don't compare to Rockies or Appalachians!), WI Lk Superior towns such as Ashland and Bayfield, WI, and Duluth-Superior. Then you'd have Minneapolis-St. Paul as you'd head back (& chance for a Twins game as Target Field).

For camping, many northern small cities have cheap city/county campgrounds, as well as ones in National Forests (e.g. Chequamegon-Nicollet National Forest)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolet_National_Forest

Starting in Chicago drive north and hit up

Devils Lake, Baraboo WI

Rib Mountain, Wausau, WI

Porcupine Mtns, Ontonagen, MI

Houghton/Hancock, Copper Harbor, MI

Marquette, MI

If your flat lander legs survive the trip, consider yourself fit...

Ole Timer wrote:

Yooper Man wrote:

Up Lake Michigan...

This is a sweet trip. Up to the Yoopers, back down along the west coast of Michigan -- perfect!

What they said.

Do a lap around the lake. There are other more exotic places, but it will take you a full day or 1.5 days to get there and back, putting a big dent in your week.

The UP is great as is that NW corner of Michigan ( Leelanau peninsula) Potosky, Traverse City, Sleeping Bear dunes are great, Manitou Islands , shit even spend a night on Mackinaw if you want (and can afford it) there are tons of kids your age working jobs on the island, you may get lucky. Camp your way around the lake.

Another vote for Duluth and the Superior Trail System http://www.shta.org/

Don't come to michigan we will mess you up in Detroit boi