Lots of surprises!
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| Winnie at the Bean |
Then we got talking to the incredibly helpful guy at the shop. We told him about some of our ideas for the next few weeks. He listened, then told us why he would not choose to take a lot of the routes we were picturing. He had a close call on a country road similar to the ones we would be spending a lot of our time riding, said the farmers really didn't like bikes, and besides, the roads are all flat, and once you are off the lakeside trails on the way to Indiana Dunes, you get taken through some sketchy areas. But he had lots of ideas about great alternatives.
So to make this quick, we let go of the idea of riding out Saturday morning to Indiana Dunes. Instead, we hopped on Amtrak to Springfield, IL. Well, when I say hopped - we were still more or less on western time, but Bruce thought we'd need to get up at 6:15. Ouch. The hotel restaurant opened at 7, so we were at the door as it opened. But it didn't open. It opened at 8 on weekends and we had planned to ride to the train station starting at 8. No problem. The guy at the desk pointed us to a place down the street where we quickly got a decent breakfast, headed back and loaded our panniers on the bikes and got out the door at about 7:50. Hurray! Then I remembered jut how hard it is to get my inflexible leg over a bike with panniers. On a busy city street. In the rain. I'll try to avoid TMI and just say Bruce held the bike; I got on & didn't crash. We rode the 5 or 6 blocks to the station. Or rather, to where Google said the station was. Only it wasn't. All we found was a weekday entrance to a few tracks, not the ones we needed. A local nearby pointed at the big building a couple of blocks north, and a couple of blocks west. That was the right one. We checked in easily.
Then we sat on a bench for a bit. A woman who appeared to be roughly our age sat down & started talking about how she wished she could ride a bike. She figured it would be good for her arthritic knees - oh, and fun, too! By the time we had to move along, she was all set to go to her LBS and figure out the perfect bike to ride. A convert.
On to the train. The steps were sorta narrow & steep, the conductors weren't too sure where we should put the bikes, but it all worked out & we settled in for a 3 1/2 hour ride south through Illinois. Springfield station is about 5 blocks from the hotel we chose so we rode out into the street, went one block, and discovered all the streets from there to the hotel were closed to accommodate an event known as International Route 66 Mother Road Festival! Oddly, we did not see any other cyclists as we walked through the crowds. We did see an amazing collection of classic cars kept in immaculate condition. Wow.
We went to the LBS in Springfield. Bruce wanted to add some bike tights to his load. The guy there also had ideas for us: there was an 11 mile paved bike trail with a bunch of bridges just a few miles away. We must ride it right then. So we did. It was very pleasant, mostly wooded & shady, really, really flat compare to the bay area (can any of our cyclist friends imagine a 25 mile ride with a total climb of abut 200 feet?) and very uncrowded. We passed others every couple of minutes, but had fairly long stretches with no other riders in sight. Then back to the hotel, out for dinner, and off to sleep.
Today we decided to explore an Audubon Society preserve only couple of miles away in the morning, then some of the great Abraham Lincoln historical exhibits in the afternoon. Well, the preserve was terrific, but we forgot to bring our DEET on the first attempt. I walked a couple hundred feet on the trail and had about 7 mosquito bites already. So we turned around and got the insect repellent and headed back for a lovely couple of hours exploring an amazing area. I saw my favorite warbler - black and white - and a few other old eastern bird friends; Bruce saw lots and lots of plants & had fun with iNaturalist. We saw one garter snake and one big, fuzzy bright yellow caterpillar. I only got about 5 more bites. We visited the Lincoln museum this afternoon - wonderful! How often do we feel (really good) goosebumps when we read a politician's words today? And walked on to see the house he'd lived in before moving to Washington. We like Springfield. We have reserved a third night here so we can spend tomorrow visiting Lake Springfield. It has a marina that rents canoes, a Lincoln Memorial Garden that one of the Audubon Society's volunteers recommended to Bruce, and a nearby college campus. Bruce loves touring colleges. Then back to the center of town to do laundry.
Based on our trip so far, I almost hesitate to predict anything. But our tentative plan is to ride about half way to St. Louis on Wednesday, and the rest of the way on Thursday. Then, from what we are choosing now, probably a few days in that area. Then the Mississippi trail south, then east into Kentucky. We will see. If you want to bet on any of this...well, St. Louis seems to offer gelato!
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| Caterpillar |
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| Caterpillar again |
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| Garter snake |
I got to see native prairie at the park we visited. I assumed it would be grassy and open. Instead, it was 8 foot tall shrubs and grasses mixed tightly together over wet land. I couldn't see across it at all, since it was flat.
ReplyDeleteApparently the natural condition of a lot of prairie is wet underfoot. There was a natural ridge nearby that supported most north-south traffic through the area around the turn of the 19th century.