Couldn't tear ourselves away

We are spending more time than I expected in Springfield.It's really quite nice, a small, not especially healthy looking city (lots of buildings for lease in the area) but  everyone is very friendly and there is a lot to see. Today, we rode out of the main part of town - about 15 miles - to Lake Springfield. We'd found a marina that rents canoes, so we figured that would be fun. And it was, although it was not the best canoe trip ever. It was 90 degrees and humid today, so the sun was a bit intense, and the wind was fairly strong. In that heat, the wind felt good, but we didn't get very far. We did see some nice birds: white pelicans, great blue herons, and a flock of wood ducks (flying over, but I got a pretty good look). With the wind behind us, it was very easy to head back! We rode back to town and decided it would be ok to take Uber to the laundromat.

Bridge to the lake
We had a great dinner tonight. Our general food experience here has not been memorable. We had a perfectly nice Italian dinner the first night, got pretty decent Chinese food delivered to the hotel last night, and today managed to get to a restaurant I had read about, but it was filled up with the car lovers the first night, and we were tired last night. It was really good! If you ever stop for dinner in Springfield, go to Loukinen's. Bruce had steak, and I had gnocchi with all sorts of vegetables and salmon on top. It was also very filling, and the portions were generous, so we plan to warm our leftovers up for  big breakfast tomorrow before our first actual ride-to-get-somewhere day on this trip.

We have a reservation at a place along the old route 66 in Carlinville, IL (no, I had not heard of it before, either, but it breaks up the distance to St. Louis nicely!). It should be a fairly easy ride, but we expect another 90 degree day.

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