Off The Grid

Saturday was into the wind and raining. We've finally been having some strong headwinds. Everybody we ride by seems to be screaming at us "You're going the wrong way!!!".

Lunch in the rain.

We did get to jump on a nice paved trail for a while in the morning to get back on route from our Wabash detour, the optimum way to catch back up. We did not realize, however, that the western part of Indiana would be lacking in services, at least while following the Adventure Cycling route. It seems as though AC was trying a little too hard to keep us out of populated areas, stores, civilization in general. We rolled into Buffalo's little convenience store, the only open store in town, to find some food at about 3pm, all pretty hungry and getting the shakes. It was the first time we had actually run out of food while on the bike, and so have kept increasingly prepared with backup food the past few days. We did 67 miles that day.
On the way we passed by the farm that our friend Ben would be staying at. The family at the barn had painted on the road an offer for bicyclists to get free water and shade, so we took advantage of that as a rest stop.

We spent the night at a mosquito infested campground across from a group of people blasting their country music very loudly until 10:30pm. We ate our late lunch and dinner in the rain, and took cold showers at the campground, then slept in the humidity. Welcome to the midwest!

Shelby stopping for a bathroom break.

Sunday we rode to Illinois. There's getting to be a whole lot of corn in these states. Illinois wasn't very welcoming with a state sign either. Instead, mom and I got chased by a big dog across the border. Dad yelled at the dog and yelled at us to take off, but we could barely outsprint it. When it finally stopped running after us, it ran off to the side of the road and just sat and watched as the tandem rolled by. Dad got out the Mace and tried to spray it, but our headwind caught the spray and missed the dog anyway. All in all, a poor showing.

Welcome to Illinois, post dog-chasing.

Trash can delivery.

We spent the night in the Ashkum City Park after 83 miles, and got the mayor to open the bathrooms for us. Unfortunately there were no showers available, and the night was hot and incredibly humid. Around 4am, we woke to flashes of lightning and thunder really close to the park. Everybody jumped up, unstaked the tent, grabbed a corner, and hauled it under the park pavilion and out of the storm. We had no idea how bad it was going to be, and at one point were making plans to run to the bathrooms in case of tornado. It finally calmed down around 5:30, so we all were able to get some sleep. Only an hour later, however, the city of Ashkum was getting brand new trash cans. And they were all being unloaded right in front of the park. Trucks pulled up with trash barrels stacked 15 high and filled with water, so the workers just knocked them over to dump the water out, sending them crashing to the ground and sounding like more thunder. Good morning indeed.

We spent the next day outrunning an even worse storm, so we got a hotel that night in Streator after 69 miles. We had to go off route to get to that town, because of course the map wouldn't want to take us anywhere with shelter or stores or any sort of traffic. There was some awesome lightning that night, nothing like what we see out west.

Flooding issues.

Tuesday we rode another 70 from Streator to a campground near Sheffield. It was decided earlier in the day that it would be possible to cut off 30 miles and go through larger towns with more services by going off route the rest of the way to Iowa. So we threw the maps to the corn and trusted our adventure to Google Maps. We had to spend a lot of the day on a busier highway, but near the end spent a few miles on the Hennepin Canal Trail, another old towpath like the Erie Canal Trail was, although this one was slightly rougher.

Wednesday we continued on this trail. It wasn't exactly road bike friendly the whole way. In many places it was overgrown and rocky or muddy, but it was still ridable and a nice break from traffic and the wind. This was at least the case until the trail was flooded from all the rainstorms the past few days. That required a lot of re-navigation and wrong turns. The day that was supposed to be in the 50's for mileage ended up being a 70-miler with all of our wrong turns, but we did make it to an Iowa county campground. The Mississippi River has a lot of water in it right now.

Mississippi River

Also no "Welcome to Iowa" sign, so...

Thursday we hoped to get to Lowden, IA to receive a pick up from Jed and Brenda Wyse, our friends from Cedar Rapids. We claimed we would be there by noon, as we only had to ride 31 miles according to Google. What we didn't know at the time was that Google routed us down many miles of gravel roads, a large percentage of which were made up of loose rock. Gravel riding was extremely slow. We were an hour late to our pickup, and rode 38 miles instead.

The good news is that we are safe at the Wyse ranch and plan to spend all of today here, not on our bike. Riding in a car on the way here was a strange experience. Cars suddenly can go so fast. And they have air conditioning. Imagine that.

Happy Fourth of July from all of us here!