Day 16: Weekdays in Western Illinois

Nauvoo, IL to Burlington, IA

Stats!
Miles biked today: 44.6
Total miles biked: 552.6
Max speed: 26
# of dollars spent at bike shop: hundreds
# of yawns on the road: 22

Today was kind of a slow day. Dean and I woke up to rain in our tent at the Nauvoo Dairy Sweet. The weather predicted scattered thunderstorms all day. We tried to wait it out a bit in the morning, but it never really stopped. So we packed up our wet tent in the rain. Yuk!

Right as we were ready to set off, we heard terrible thunder, so we decided to bike into Nauvoo "downtown" to go to a used bookstore. It turned out to be all Mormon books (Nauvoo has a large Mormon community), so we didn't stay long. We figured we'd have to get on the road at some point, so we just got going.

Every day on the road, the first 10 minutes are the hardest (all things being equal). Your butt is really sore, and your quads are exhausted, and everything in your body is just begging you not to do this to it again. The first 10 minutes today, we had all that, plus rain.

But after those first few miles, you feel much better, and once we got going a bit, it was cloudy but mostly dry. We saw some AMAZING lightning bolts way off in the distance. When it's flat, you can see just about forever. It wasn't even raining where we were, but those lightning bolts were pretty impressive.

Much of what we saw today looked like just what I imagined the midwest looked like. Flat and farms forever. We were biking on a huge grid most of the day, just like a city would have, except there was only a road every mile. Farmland in each block. It was pretty, though, and the changing color sky and clouds accented it.

We stopped for lunch in Lomax, IL, in a place called "The Pink." This was the first ever place we felt unwelcome on the trip so far. Mostly everyone has been very interested in our trip, and very friendly. On the way out I spotted an unusual license plate. If you got a vanity plate, what would yours say? ;)


We knew we wanted to stop in Burlington, Iowa today because they have a bike shop, and we were in dire need of all kinds of supplies. But we had started out so late because of the rain, and we were both pretty tired (from sleeping in the tent, maybe?), so we decided to just stay in Burlington tonight.

The bike shop trip was a major success, and we also went to Target and got some books for Dean. He finished his book a few nights ago, and has been hurting for one ever since.

Tonight we are staying at the Motel Lincolnville, or as it's known in lights, the El 'Nville. It's one of Burlington's least fine establishments, but right in our price range!

Tomorrow we hope to make it to Muscatine, IA. I hope you're all still enjoying the blog!

Day 15: Into the Great Wide Open

Hannibal, MO to Nauvoo, IL

Stats!
Miles biked today: 73.1 (a new record!)
Total miles biked on trip: 508.0 (a new century!)
Max speed: 31.0 mph
# of motorcycles that passed us (going both directions): 117
# of degrees Fahrenheit: 93
# of closed bike shops: 2
# of state lines crossed: 1

All last night I dreamed about biking. Our rest day in Hannibal, while sorely needed, was pretty darn boring, and I was ready to get back on the road. We even only ate 3 meals on our rest day, and I think we could have been okay with 2. But since we ended up biking so much today, I'm glad we had the third.

We set out this morning pretty early, and started the day with a quick jaunt on the interstate -- I-72. It allows bikes across the bridge over the Mississippi only, and there's a HUGE shoulder, so it wasn't very scary. Still, I was glad to get off the interstate, and be welcomed in Illinois, the land that loves Lincoln (as Dean pointed out, we love Lincoln, too, but Illinois is almost as proud of Lincoln as Missouri is of Twain. I'm not sure if Illinois should be more proud or Missouri less... ?).

The great majority of our first 55 miles today were F L A T. It was glorious! You could see for miles and miles. In fact, I had the song that goes, "I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles," in my head, along with the Peter Pan tune, "You can fly, you can fly, you can fly!" We were going about 20 mph for much of the way, due to the extreme flatness and a rare tailwind.

We were excited to stop in Quincy, IL because there was a bike shop there, and we need various items that you can pretty much only find at bike shops. It was closed for the holiday, as was the one in Hannibal. No luck at all for us on that front.

Quincy was also our last chance to feed and water ourselves for another 35 miles, so we hit the local Irish pub (most everything else was closed for the holiday) and had a fine meal before hitting the flatlands again.

The wide open spaces are pretty, but it does get a bit monotonous. I'm not complaining, though! I'll take 70 miles of flat over 15 miles of mountains any day of the week and twice on Sundays (and national holidays).

We also stopped in Warsaw, IL. That town had been our original goal destination, but since we got there at 1 p.m. and Nauvoo was only another 20 miles down the road, we decided to press on. We had a WONDERFUL second lunch there. It was hot, hot, hot and without much shade on our route. After 35 miles of that, we were ready to cool off and refill our water bottles ASAP. The cafe where we stopped had the most delicious lemonade I've ever had. We left feeling very refreshed.

That was good, since the last 20 miles were hilly. It wasn't bad at all -- they were all achievable -- but when you've already biked 55 miles, 20 miles of hills seems a bit harder. Dean and I now have two categories of hills -- achievable and "walkers." We hit two walkers today only, both going into towns from the flat riverside.

Speaking of which, the river is still a bit flooded, and we saw lots of underwater picnic tables and such.

Tomorrow I am hoping for another super flat day. Even if it's a little bit hilly, we should make it to Iowa. Exciting!!

I feel really good about how far we biked today. It really shows how far we've come from day one. 63 miles that day was killer, and 73 today seemed much easier, and both were on flat terrain.

Tonight we're camping at the Nauvoo Dairy Sweet and RV Park in our tent. It's nice to save some money and it's kinda fun to sleep in the tent, so long as it's not every night or in tornadoes. Should be nice tonight!

Day 9: We've Been to Hill and Back

St. Louis, MO to Augusta, MO

Stats!
Miles biked: 53.9
Total miles biked so far: 308.2
Max speed: 23 mph
# of mountain ranges biked: 1.5 (Blue Ridge and Appalachians)
# of mountain ranges covered via support vehicle: 2.5 (part of Appalachians, Alleghenys, and Ozarks)
# of times Dean's chain fell off today: 0!
# of times Dean was off the chain: 6

First let me say that we took _a ton_ of pictures today, but we have a very weak signal and are having problems uploading them. When we get somewhere with a stronger connection we'll edit this post to include photos.

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday. My parents picked us up in Blacksburg to take us to Illinois and we were exhausted when we arrived. We had originally planned to bike Illinois and southern Missouri (the Ozarks), but it would have been 8 days of miserable biking through mountain ranges, and the same distance only took 30 minutes by car. So I asked my folks to drop us in St. Louis. We didn't quite make it last night, but they took us to St. Louis early this morning. THANK YOU, Mom and Dad, for the final use of the support vehicle! I think our trip will be much happier without 600 miles worth of mountains. 600 mi of mountains on a bike = unhappy Meredith = unhappy Dean = lame honeymoon.

And even going 600 miles by support vehicle, we'll still cover thousands of miles -- certainly more than 3,000 -- on the trip, so I think it still counts as cross-country.

And! Our ride from St. Louis to Augusta today was great! We started off at the arch, which was beautiful. The gateway to the west! Downtown St. Louis was amazing. I definitely could live there. It has a lot of old city feel, and it smells like hops! Beautiful architecture, very bikeable, multiple universities, a great park. Loved it!

Once we got out into the suburbs, things got a little tougher. We definitely had a hilly ... maybe 10 miles or so. And one of the roads that we were on for about 4 miles was being resurfaced, so it was rough and grooved the whole way. NOT ideal biking, especially on steep hills. We were white-knuckling it.

Then the map told us to go through this suburban neighborhood (and they had a typo on the street name), and instructed us to sneak under a chained off area and cut through a housing complex parking lot. It was signed "PRIVATE PROPERTY NO BICYCLES" but we did it anyway. What choice did we have? We don't know our way around Maryland Heights, Missouri.

It led us to a path that took us across the Missouri River. We stopped at a little restaurant on Mallard Lake and had some refreshing beverages before we started to tackle the Katy Trail. Dean had his first mid-ride beer. We saw an awesome T-bird in the parking lot.

The Katy trail is crushed limestone, and flat, flat, FLAT (Dean wants me to say it was "flatter than piss on a plate."). Haaaaaaaah-le-lu-jah! It mostly followed the Missouri River. Very pretty. It smelled of honeysuckle most of the way. We saw lots of turtles, a few cranes, and the bluest birds you've ever seen. I don't think they were Bluebirds or Bluejays -- they were electric blue and shiny. They were a dark bright blue, if that makes sense at all. I tried googling but have no idea what they are. Anyone know?

We stopped in Defiance, MO for ice cream, on the recommendation of a random stranger in the suburbs of St. Louis. It turned out that the ice cream shop was also a bike shop! Dean got a new jersey (apparently he is now a huge Hawkeyes fan -- should go over well in Iowa) and replacement tubes since we've had a few flats. The shop was really cute, and they had a shop cat named Harley who was very sweet. The ice cream was excellent.


Not long after, we arrived in Augusta, got a place to stay, and had dinner at the brewery. Somehow, Augusta - pop 218 - has a brewery, a winery, and 5 B&Bs. The food and the beer were fantastic.

Tomorrow should be hillier. We'll see where we end up!