The Illinois official bicycle maps are excellent – still the best ones I know of even though some other midwestern states have also come out with good maps in recent years. The green roads are the ones rated the best, the orange ones are good, too, and the red ones should usually be avoided.

But what about the gray roads? The Illinois maps leave those as an adventure for the rider. Often they’re gravel. But the one in Putnam County circled in red (above) is different. It no longer exists as a road. At least the south part doesn’t.

If there really was a road, it would go straight ahead, down across the creek bottom. But it doesn’t look like a road has gone that way for a long time. (Somewhere in the woods along that creek was what was known as Ramsey’s Indians — a stand of poplar trees that a Ramsey was said to have mistaken for Indians during the Black Hawk war scare.)

Then there are the sections like this. Today (well, yesterday) after seeing that the road along the creek near Ramsey’s Indians didn’t even exist, I wondered what I would find here. If the bridge existed and there was a gravel road, I’d take it, because it would save me several miles, including a mile of backtracking into a mild wind.

But in this case, it turned out that not only was there a road, but it was a paved road! Nice. And there was another one like that, too, on the border between Putnam and Marshall counties.

Miles today: 71. YTD mileage: 1643.5