Yeah, Larry pretty much summed it up correctly. I live in Warrenville, but tend to avoid traffic on my rides. The nearest "interesting" ride is along the North Shore of the lake on Sheridan Road. I can never believe the topography so close to the city. It's a slow ride and really, once you've done it, well... best to do it on an early Sunday morning with the joggers.
It usually takes me a couple hours to get to anything twisty/rolling. There are some small stretches of curves out in the corn fields of Kendall, Kane and DeKalb counties, but they're pretty short lived. There's a really nice part of Rt.71 on the southern edge of Starved Rock that's a lot of fun, but I find you have to turn around and hit it 3/4 times to make it worth the ride out there. I'll go there just to get a hotdog at Grumpy's (Rt 71 & I-80).
Just south of Princeton, IL is some nice rolling land that was formed on the western side of the Illinois river. There's also a lot of gravel roads to navigate through that kind of sour the moments. I still get out there when I can.
My favorite area, as Larry mentioned, is out around Galena, IL. Awesome roads are Blackjack and Stagecoach, with a lot of minor roads around them to seek out.
Getting out a bit further are the WI roads. Anything North and West of Monroe, WI are getting to be good rides. I seek out the cheese factories in the area. There's probably 6-8 of them around Monroe west to Darlington. The further North into Wi you go the better things get. West of Madison, along the Wisconsin River is really fun. I have to thank John from Mt. Horab for the tour he gave a few of us 2 summers ago. North of The WI river gets ever better for hilly, twisty routes. Just outside of La Crosse is a road that has the Mindoro Cut which I found to be a great ride. It was previously mentioned to check out "Rustic Roads", and another that I use is has
maps of different WI regions to ride.
Best of luck on your move and let us Midwesterners know when you get ready to ride the area.
Have fun,
Jer
