Today I entered Illinois. The trail across Illinois goes close to straight east to west, just 220 miles across. We will pass through the towns of Park Forest, Joliet, Morris, LaSalle, DePue, Tiskilwa, and Moline, exiting the state at Rock Island. We will follow the Illinois River about halfway across the state until DePue, then make our way west to the Mississippi River at the Iowa border.
Though our walk will not take us closer than 20 miles from downtown Chicago, we are currently in the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area, the third largest metropolitan area in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles, so we will be walking through the outskirts of the Chicago area for the next few days.
I know that I passed through Illinois when I was a kid, but also, I travelled here for a week of work when I was with Farmers Insurance. That work was in Schaumburg, a city a little north and west of Chicago, but the whole ride back and forth looked like one big city. My most enduring impression was that I worked on about the eighth floor of a building there, and looking out from the windows on both sides, the world looked absolutely flat, the most perfectly smooth and flat view I can ever remember seeing, like you could imagine you could see the curve of the earth from up there.
This week, I passed 3,000,000 steps, which, combined with 7,000,000 on my last walk means I have walked 10,000,000 steps since I started tracking in 2021. That's the equivalent of 10,000 steps per day for 1,000 days, so it is some measure of perseverance, a word that is not always associated with my efforts.
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