All aboard for lakefront fun
With a little thought, trains could ease access to Chicago outdoors
South Shore train trips from South Bend, Indiana, to Chicago enlivened my college life years ago.
To this day, riding the South Shore pulls up memories.
Those early rides in and late rides back came to mind when Indiana Dunes State Park staff announced an innovative idea for Chicago-area people to take the South Shore out and spend ‘‘A Day in the Dunes’’ next Sunday.
The South Shore train and the Indiana Dunes meld two of my romantic notions of the good life in the outdoors.
I think Chicago should consider the idea of a similar South Shore/ Metra/Amtrak promotion for fishing the Chicago lakefront or even just for using the Chicago lakefront.
Metra already allows bikes on most trains. Amtrak slowly is beginning to allow them. Eventually, the South Shore will join the modern world and allow them, too.
I know some already take Metra, especially with the weekend ticket special, to bike the lakefront. Some of us do it for fishing, too. Fishing gear is a lot easier to stash on trains than bikes are.
In the summer of 2014, I did a Metra ride for some night fishing on the Chicago River with Jeff Nolan, Ryan Whitacre and others.
On the ride in on the Electric Line (I live south), I was picked up at the McCormick Place stop before we launched from the Daley Launch on the South Branch. I just thought it was cool to have two rods broken down and a tackle bag on the seat next to me on the Metra. Other riders thought it was cool, too. I could have stashed the fishing gear in the wire luggage rack if I had wanted.
After fishing, Nolan dropped me off around midnight near Michigan Avenue. I walked the couple of blocks through the human milieu that makes Chicago distinctive to Millennium Station, then took the train home.
The Metra ride to and from fishing built the ambience of the night as much as the companionship and fishing itself.
I think it would be neat to come up with a more formal use of trains for a deliberate daylong outing on the Chicago lakefront.
With my brain on fire, I came up with ‘‘Come for Coho,’’ a late-March or early-April outing for spring coho; ‘‘Tracks for Trout,’’ which could be in the fall for shoreline lake trout or other times for rainbow trout/steelhead and brown trout; and ‘‘Metra to Montrose,’’ a June or July outing with a bus ride from Millennium and Union stations to the fabled horseshoe at Montrose Harbor to fish for yellow perch.
It would begin with a stop at Park Bait, the old-school bait shop at Montrose, or Henry’s Sports and Bait, the modern urban bait/ tackle shop in Bridgeport. Catered lunch could come from Al’s Italian Beef or Ricobene’s. There would be a side trip to the fishing spots at Origins Park around the mouth of Bubbly Creek or the ones along the north side of Navy Pier.
Then it’s home on Metra as the sun sets over the city.
At least in my romantic view, it makes economic sense.