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Well, tomorrow is another day, and after a day like yesterday, I totally needed a day like today. It started off good, and ended, well, I am currently in a hot tub. Pretty good.
We got an early start this morning. The weather was cool and sunny, with a great tail wind. Perfect for a bike ride. We practically flew, and by mid morning, we had crossed the mighty Mississippi River and made it to Chester IL. By the way, Chester is the birthplace of the creator of Popeye. The character was based on a local “scrapper”. For some reason I was really tickled by this fact.
In Chester we stopped by a grocery store to replenish our bread and peanut butter. We also had a snack of a super sized protein drink and bananas. We can’t seem to eat enough, and, being naturally thin, Mike and I are now downright skinny. We have both lost about 10 lbs. I go out of my way to read the calories on the food we buy, to make sure we get the most bang for our buck (luckily our hotel tonight is not 300 ft. from an all-you-can-eat buffet.) Upon leaving Chester we decided to take the Mississippi levee alternate route. This route would be flatter and more scenic than the main route, but, it is 40 miles without services. After some of the stretches we did in Utah and Nevada, this seemed like a cake walk, and it was. We wound our way along levee roads, through corn and soy fields. We watched some feed corn being harvested while waiting for an extremely long coal carrying train to pass. We then passed a coal depot of some sort. It was huge mountains of coal, and it looks like the trains bring it in and then this big conveyer would funnel it out towards barges in the river. We also encountered our first two untethered farm dogs. The first looked like a black lab, and was waiting for us in the street, when we approached on our bikes, he fled into the soybean field, and we could just see his head sticking out above the crops as we passed. It was very cute, Mike thinks that the poor dog was frightened by his bedraggled visage. The second dog looked like a Rottweiler mix, and he just sat and watched us from his yard. We now have some doggy mace, for emergencies, but I’m starting to doubt that we’ll need it.
We stopped in a small town and ate some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and trail mix. There was nothing in this town except a post office, and the very nice lady working there, was not supposed to let us use the restroom, but, I won’t tell if you don’t.
The 40 miles flew by, and we made it to Carbondale by 4pm. We stopped by a couple of bike shops in town and talked to a guy who had just completed a transam tour this summer, we also finally managed to get a replacement tire for Mike. Now, 75 miles later, we are relaxing in our hotel waiting for Kate and Kara to arrive. Awesome day.