First off, we want to thank all of our veterans for their service to keep our country free. We are so thankful that our nephew, Cole, made it home safely. Cole, we are so proud of you and all of the service men that are fighting for our freedom! We are proud to be American's in this beautiful country of ours! God Bless America!
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| In Bradford they were having a Memorial Day celebration but it wasn't for a couple of hours so we didn't stay. There were flags all along their main street. |
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| Our beautiful American Flag blowing in the breeze! |
We left our hotel this morning at 6:50 and headed out in hopes that we can get some miles in before the winds pick up. We lucked out because the wind this morning was coming from the southwest and we were heading east or south all morning. Going east we had a great tailwind (in fact we were doing 18 mph in one 12 mile section). Unfortunately that didn't last all day. When we started out this morning we realized, in a hurry, that we were in for another tough day of biking as we were in view of probably 50 wind generators at any given time for about the first 4 hours. Yes, it is windy here all the time apparently or they wouldn't have all of these wind generators in the fields. We had 40 miles in when we arrived in Henry, Illinois at 11:30 so we stopped at Subway for lunch and for some beverage as it was really heating up. The high today was 92 degrees so needless to say we did a lot of drinking to keep from getting dehydrated. Even with the wind we were both sweating as we pedaled down the road. In Henry we biked on the bridge over the Illinois River and once again saw a lot of flooding. After leaving Henry we had 19 miles to go and although it was hot we were feeling pretty good. Then the wind switched and we ended up biking the 19 miles with more of a sidewind than a headwind but it definitely slowed us down. We arrived in Wenona around 3:00PM and checked into another Super 8. John and I are both really surprised at how many little towns we have been biking through and how far apart the hotels are. We have been averaging 65 miles per day and it is mainly due to our having to bike from hotel to hotel. In fact the next several days we will be biking off our route to get to a hotel.
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| View of the Illinois country side! |
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| You know your biking slowly when two ducks can waddle in front of you! lol |
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| What a joy it is to be able to bike along and always have such beautiful scenery! |
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| Crossing the Illinois River outside of Henry - the flooding went well beyond those trees! |
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| We saw this couple planting with all these pots in their yard. We went over on the side of the road to ask them what they were planting but due to the wind they couldn't hear us and we couldn't hear her response. He didn't even look up so either he hadn't heard us or just wanted us to go away. lol |
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| You can see just a few of the wind generators that we biked by all morning! |
We walked down to Burger King and had supper and now we are settled in our room for the night. We heard from Marilyn and Gary Solomon tonight and we will be meeting up with them on Wednesday. They plan on biking with us for a couple of days and then heading back to Ohio on Friday.
John figured out that if we continue to bike 60 miles each day and don't take any days off we could be in Bar Harbor, Maine by June 24th. That is hard to believe and I am sure that we are not going to be able to bike 60 miles every day without taking a day or so off.
I'm following your progress closely. On June 21, I'm taking Billie to catch a plane in Burlington, Vermont. From there, I could possibly find you along the road or meet you in Bar Harbor. What a pleasure that would be for me.
ReplyDeleteDean - good to hear from you. You can find out by following the blog and you will no exactly where we should be at each evening. We would enjoy meeting up with you for dinner or a bike ride. Say hi to Billie for us.
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