After leaving Greenville, we managed to avoid miles of fresh chipseal with a little backtracking to the perfectly fine highway we had been riding. We found that Illinois highways are shoulderless mostly, sometimes with just gravel for a shoulder, but mostly devoid of traffic. The traffic we did encounter was respectful and pulled over to the other lane when they could so we felt pretty safe.
We were trying to connect with a warm showers house in Edwardsville, but hadn’t had any luck. As we were riding route 141, we saw a touring cyclist heading the other way. Jeff stopped and we stopped and pulled off the side of the road and chatted for about 20 minutes. He had just stayed with that warm showers host, that we figured she might have just been overloaded. Jeff was 110 days and 5,000 mi into his own cross country tour, heading to Pittsburgh and DC. The host contacted us later after we already had a hotel. Still a learning curve for me with warm showers and maybe using text more than the messaging system. I’ll get it down.
We had a little break at the corner tavern in Edwardsville, a extremely fun local bar where all the patrons were interested in our trip and we were well served by MJ, the bartender. One of the patrons bought us a round. Fortunately we were drinking low alcohol beers and we were fine after two.
We headed it off for another night in a hotel, as while there are a number of campgrounds in the area, they are RV parks and don’t allow tent camping. Camping snobs! We finished the day with 47 miles, relatively short compared to what we’ve been doing.
Tomorrow, we’re headed to my sister Jean’s in St Charles, another short day & hopefully under 40 miles.
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