I think the rain gods finally gave up and gave us a half day of clear skies. Enough is enough. Continental breakfast, actually fairly decent, and then on with the rain gear as it was drizzling outside. The bikes were parked under the entrance (thanks nice motel lady) so everything was nice and dry when we packed the bikes up. Today we needed to get south a bit to avoid the vortex around Chicago that pulls all the roads north west.
It was a lot of jiggling and wiggling and random turns mixed with detours (they just close the road to work on it, no flagmen required) and detours around detours and somehow we put in a nice long day and ended up on the banks of the Mississippi River in Moline, IL.
Mid-day the rain let up and slowly but surely, the skies cleared and things warmed up and dried our. We removed layers as the day went on so by end of day, we both had our jeans and porous jackets and bright sun. Corn and soy were everywhere and we saw a few fields that had been cut, but most everything was still growing. It seems October is when the combines start harvesting everything, and it must be pretty exciting all over this middle part of the country. Every hundred miles or so is another big combine dealer and we had to pass a huge combine on Rt 17 which took a while. They are so big, they have to drive part on the road and part in the ditch. It raises the question of how they even get these combines here from wherever they make them. They are too big for a truck or train and too slow to drive here. Figure that one out for me..
And there are a ton of windmills here. We must have seen several hundred today all stuck in the middle of the corn and soy fields. Very majestic. Dave's bike wouldn't start after filling with gas and it turned out to be a simple battery terminal issue, which he figured out pretty quickly.
The roads were just for us for the most part and the towns on these little roads are not on the way to anything so we saw mostly nice healthy looking town towns with old brick buildings, sidewalks, trim lawns, etc. And somehow we put in 350 miles or so and we can throw a stone across the river to Iowa. One note is that there are no motels on these little roads and in these out of the way towns, so we went north toward Moline where the interstates all cross and found then all. Checked in and walked down the street for dinner.
My new favorite equipment are the Aerostitch rain gloves. Why I did not buy these ten years ago...
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