I was finally able to get out to the Evanston Lakefront Bikeways earlier this week for a ride, photos and ride report. It was a little windy but still a beautiful day on Monday when I rode the Evanston Bike Paths.

Lake Michigan as seen from the Evanston Lakefront Bike Path.

I often refer to this route as “bikeways” since this is not really a specific bike path but a series of bike paths, a bike lane on Sheridan Road, roads through Northwestern University and even sidewalks that you need to ride on to get through all of Evanston along Lake Michigan.

I started my ride in Wilmette ~ around Gillson Park ~ rode down Sheridan Road to Northwestern University ~ where you can get on a bike path right next to Lake Michigan ~ through Evanston and even into Chicago where I turned around at Rogers Avenue Beach.

Most of this ride is very nice although it is not a bike path the entire way and you need to hop on to roads and sidewalks to get through Evanston. I think that the best part of this bike route is the bike path that starts at Northwestern University and goes south to Lee street. This part is almost all paved and right next to Lake Michigan although is is only a 2 mile stretch.

The Baha'i temple in Wilmette

Another nice thing about this bike route is that you can connect to the Green Bay Trail at the north end or to the Chicago Lakefront Bike Path on the south (although you need to ride about a mile and a half in the city to get to it).

I brought my camera and GPS bike computer to document the ride and post it here, of course so you can read all about this bike path ~ and see the photos ~ at the new Evanston Lakefront Bikeways page.

I really enjoyed this ride and I always love being out by Lake Michigan (especially on really hot days) but one of my favorite parts of this ride was my side trip to the Baha’i temple in Wilmette for photos and my ride to the beach at Gillson Park (also in Wilmette). The Baha’i temple is a beautiful building and I actually spent a lot of time at the beach at Gillson Park when I was younger and I still like it there.

Since I had my camera with me for the bike ride photos, I took advantage of the photo op at the Bahai temple and I also posted quite a few photos of this landmark building on the last photo page for this ride. This is probably one of my favorite bike trail photo pages now even though most of it is not actually on a bike trail. You can see these photos here at the Evanston Lakefront Bike Path Photo Page 4.

I have been aware of the Bahai temple and knew where it was for many years but I never actually went over to it for a closer visit. I was glad that I did on this trip. The building, architecture, and exterior decorations are beautiful and made for some good photos.

Although I had heard of the Bahai faith ~ mostly because of some songs on a Seals and Crofts album (they wrote and recorded the song “Summer Breeze” and were Bahai followers) ~ I ended up looking up a bunch of information on the religion and on the temple in Wilmette on the internet when I got back and was posting the photos and bike ride article.

I thought that it was really interesting that some of the columns on the temple were decorated with swastikas along with the star of David and the Christian cross.  After looking this up on the internet I found that the swastika has been around for centuries and has been used as a symbol good things for various religions and civilizations long before it was used as a symbol for hatred and racism by the Nazis.

Well that’s it for the Evanston Lakefront bike ride. This is prime-time bike riding season so I’ll be selecting, riding and reporting on another trail soon and hope that you cyclists out there are also able to get out and enjoy some good riding!