6/19/19

We stopped at the only place in town for breakfast.  Their selection was limited but we had to take what we could get.

First thing out of Denver we hit a bike trail which was very nice.  We thought it unusual for a trail out here but it was well maintain and 3 miles long.  We continued on to our first rest stop out in the middle of nowhere, just an intersection of two county roads.  This is where we normally depend on our own food stored in our cubbies but the church gave us some of the leftover food.

When you have a long day like today you tend to just focus on the distance to the next rest stop not the whole 98 miles.  We travel along a lot of paved county roads today.  There is very little traffic and the traffic that there is gives us a lot of room and slowly passes us.  The roads didn’t have any real shoulders so the consideration is much appreciated.

We were riding along 900N when we crossed US Highway 35 on an elevated overpass.  Just as we were going over US Highway 35 an 18 wheeler had one of his tires blow.  Rubber was flying everywhere.  I was riding behind Ed and I saw of piece to the tire coming over the bridge just as Ed was crossing.  I hollowed for Ed to watch out but there was nothing he could do. The piece to tire dropped before reaching Ed.  I can do without that kind of excitement.   When I checked out MPH it was in the area in which we were going our fastest.  My max speed for the day was 25.9 MPH on one downhill section.

We rode of over 7 hours and 26 minutes today.  Thinking about sitting in the saddle for that length of time wears me out.

We crossed over into Illinois today.  Since we were traveling on county roads there wasn’t any big Welcome sign.  The best we could do was take a picture of Illinois County sign.

We camped out in the city park.  They had a shower with warm water.  It wasn’t great but after 98 miles is was a welcome relief.

Kelly, our lead route leader’s mother met us here and brought us sandwich fixings, fruit and other great things.

We pitched our tent under a pavilion which turned out to be a blessing since it rained hard during the night.

We are now in CENTRAL TIME ZONE.