Chicago Travel Destinations 1,000 Miles Away

You probably know your neighborhood pretty well.

If a guest asks where the closest pharmacy is, you probably have at least two or three options to choose from within walking or driving distance. You may even know the surrounding neighborhoods pretty well, or maybe you are an expert on all things Chicago altogether!

The point is, as we get more curious about our surroundings, the more we feel like our personal radius of exploration widens. We travel further and further away, and we know more about the world in our immediate and not-so-immediate surroundings. 

But what about places that are a county, a state, a country or even a continent away? What do we know about those places? 

We may be separated by a few hundred or a few thousand miles, but these faraway destinations are as much a part of our world as the grocery store across the street is. So, in the spirit of exploration, we’ve found some fascinating destinations that are exactly one thousand, two thousand and three thousand miles away from your very own luxury Chicago apartments.

Chicago travel destinations

1,000 miles away

Bar Harbor

Mount Desert Island, Maine

If you're looking for a town that encapsulates both a quaint seaside fishing village and a cozy mountain town, then Bar Harbor should be the next vacation destination you book. This small oceanside village on Mount Desert Island is a popular tourist destination for those visiting Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the Atlantic seaboard. 

If you manage to catch the sunrise from the top of this breezy peak, you’ll be the first people in the United States to catch those morning rays peeking out over the Atlantic. 

Austin

Texas

We like Austin so much that we decided to plant some AMLI communities right in the heart of the city!

Truly, though, Texas’ capital city has been a hub for arts, culture and music for decades. Many cultural icons, including Janis Joplin, Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and many more, have roots in Austin’s musical scene.

Bighorn National Forest

Wyoming

Draped over the spine of the Bighorn Mountains and winding through over 80 miles of Wyoming wilderness is the Bighorn National Forest, one of the oldest government-protected lands in the country. This sprawling land covers over one million acres of forest, grassland, mountains and rivers and is home to a wide variety of fauna and flora, including moose, elk, cougars, pronghorn and coyotes. 

2,000 miles away

Gulf of Fonseca

El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras

Bounded by El Salvador on the northwest, Honduras to the northeast and Nicaragua to the southeast, the Gulf of Fonseca has been a site of disputed land rights for over a century. The gulf contains a number of islands and volcanoes that had been the source of controversial land and water claims between the three neighboring countries, but a 1992 decision by the International Court of Justice ruled that the gulf be shared equally by the three nations. The islands within the gulf were distributed between El Salvador and Honduras. 

Punta Cana

Dominican Republic

Punta Cana is a resort town on the coast of the Dominican Republic’s easternmost province. The town is a major tourist destination for beach goers, scuba divers, windsurfers and snorkelers, and it is just two hours away from the capital city of Santo Domingo.

3,000 miles away

Myggbukta

Greenland

Have you ever hated mosquitoes enough to name a place after it? Well, that’s exactly what Norwegian expeditionist Johan A. Olsen did in 1922 when he arrived on the northeastern coast of Greenland. Olsen established a whaling station in the barren coastal landscape and named it Myggbukta for the mosquito-infested land surrounding it (mygg=mosquito, butka= bay).

Although the meteorological and radio station is now abandoned, Mosquito Bay was once the capital of the short-lived Erik the Red’s Land in the early 1930s when Norwegian hunters annexed the land in their country’s name. The station lies abandoned now in the Northeast Greenland National Park, the largest national park in the world.

Kodiak Island

Alaska

Kodiak Island along Alaska’s southern coast is the second-largest island in the United States after Hawaii, stretching nearly 99 miles long and up to 60 miles wide. It’s about 30 miles from the mainland and is a part of an archipelago that is an extension of the Kenai mountain range to the northeast. 

Kodiak island is home to a variety of birds and animals that are scattered throughout the frozen tundra and dense forests found along the island. Among the most famous of the native wildlife species is the Kodiak bear, the largest of the grizzly bear species and the second-largest bear species in the world after the polar bear. 

The North Pole

If you went onto Google Maps and clicked on the handy-dandy measuring tool, you can calculate the distance to pretty much anywhere in the world. You can drag your little pointer all over the planet and find how far away something is right down to the very mile. If you were to drag that little measuring tool straight up from Chicago for 3,000 miles, you’d hit the very edge of the map. In fact, there is no more north from there on out! That, my friend, means that you’ve reached the North Pole! 

Pro tip: you now know that Santa’s Workshop is exactly 3,000 miles directly north from your luxury Chicago apartment, so be sure to calculate postage costs correctly when mailing those Christmas cards!

Whether you’ve heard of these places before, visited them or never even known about their existence, these fascinating places around the country and around the world are real and accessible! The only difference between them and the laundromat down the street is that they’re just a tad farther away. 

So why not expand your neighborhood to include such places like the North Pole, a mosquito bay in Greenland, a tropical paradise or an Atlantic island? Whatever you do or wherever you go, just know that we’ll always be glad to have you back when you return home. 

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Featured photo courtesy Pixabay/piviso