The Elusive Sunrise

If you haven't watched the sunrise over Lake Michigan, you have missed something...
You can only watch this sunrise if you're somewhere on the west side of the great lake, and thankfully, that's where Chicago happens to be.

During my previous US trip in 2006-2007, I had witnessed this sunrise twice; once with Moiz and Ramesh, and then again with Vignesh & Ramesh. Of course, if you want to experience it, you have to sacrifice on your sleep a little, conquer your laziness, throw yourself out of bed by 5 am and get out of your house by 5.30. If you consider that I had done this twice, you can probably begin to imagine that there must be something to this special sunrise.

I'm sure it'll be a great experience to watch it from anywhere along the west coast of the lake, but we used to go this particular place called the "Sunrise Beach". From Mundelein you have to keep going east on Route 176 till you come to a fork on the road. Here you take a left, and you'll eventually end up at Sunrise Avenue. You have to park somewhere here and walk down to the beach, where you can sit on the big rocks by the water and wait for the Sun to rise.

When I was still in India planning for this 2nd trip, watching the sunrise in that particular place once again was one of the things high on my "To Do" list. But unfortunately I procrastinated over it for so long that it was already the 23rd of September and I still hadn't done it. So I decided that I would finish it off on the morning of 24th no-matter-what.

Come 24th morning, I struggled to wake up but somehow got out of bed and into my car and started driving. What I had not accounted for (simply because I was unaware of it) was all the construction going on on Route 176, and all the detours thanks to it. It didn't take long for me to lose my way, and by the time I got back on track, I could see the full Sun in the sky right ahead of me. I was really disappointed because this meant that now I had only one more opportunity, on my last day in the United States, to catch that elusive sunrise!!