I was told that a lot today. Illinois is broke. They ain't gonna fix it. Well no kidding...
The first 40 miles of my ride today took about 5 hours. The second 47 miles took a little under 4 hours. All in all I did 87 miles with 6:19 on bike and got into Colona about 7pm. Ergh.
The real issue was routing... I had about 5 miles left of the unquestionably beautiful but questionably surface Illinois-Missouri Canal trail to get me into the bigger sprawl crap area of La Salle. From there I could pick state highways or a kinda meandery way to the Hennepin Canal trail which would take me all the way to the Quad Cities on the Iowa border (Colona is more-or-less in that same metro area).
Since I was in a semi-busy area I went for the trail over the highway. Mistake! First, it was hella hard to find and I got stuck on one of the worst gravel roads I've been on since Wisconsin. When I finally got to the trail around mile 25 it was terrible. Pretty, yes but it had a terrible surface. It was partially paved with that 1/2 thick rock asphalt that's worse than crushed limestone, and the crushed limestone parts were soft and you sank in deeply.
The trail was officially closed, I guess, by the ancient trail closed signs everywhere. This basically means "We're out of money, this trail probably sucks now." It did. It was washed out in a few places and all-in-all pooptastic.
At mile 40 I finally got to an area where I could kick-off the trail on to regular highways. Highway 6 is a red road on the map, but it shoots straight to the Quad Cities and is right next to I80. That means that I80 will pull off all the through and truck traffic, leaving me with only saturday local traffic. I90 in South Dakota did a similar thing for my Highway 14 route about 30 miles south of it.
Highway 6 was great! Sure it was a bit hilly in spots and I had a side/headwind, but damn it was nicer. There were cars but nothing worse than what the highways out west had (no shoulder though). I pushed 35 miles into Geneso in no-time, took a short break, and then made a plan...
Oh, wait, before I tell you my plan, I did cheat for about 10 miles. A tractor passed me at about 22mph trailed by a large pickup truck with their flashers on to warn cars. I was able to draft off that truck for 10 miles, barely working to go 22 mph instead of the 16-18mph that I was doing before. I paid for it by sucking exhaust, but it was fun!
Ok, back to the plan...
So, Colona is 10 miles past Geneso and the last town before I'm in urban sprawl crap from the Quad Cities. It's still a town of a few thousand, so camping here should be hard. However, the crap canal comes through this town so I re-found it just before town and got on it to find a stealth camping spot just inside town.
I found a great spot, but when I went in farther to get water I happened upon a pavillion with water, bathrooms, and power. Even though I'm in a big town, this area seems dead. The plan is to do all my night stuff here, and then when it comes time to sleep assess if I need to bike 2 miles back to my stealth spot or if I can crash here.
Some final thoughts: The people in this part of Illinois are hella nice! It seems I'm finally out of Mordor's realm of influence. Tons more people have been coming up to me and talking to me, asking about my trip, etc. As if to punctuate this, my good buddy Hab's in Eugene's Dad came up and found me on the road once he figured out where I was. He lives in a town in Illinois about 30 minute south of where I was riding (too far off route to plan a stop.) He brought me Cherry Tomotoes! Winning!
This is probably my last night camping, as tomorrrow night I'll be at my sister's in Iowa City and then I'll ride my last day into my Dad's place in Cedar Falls. It's crazy to think that it'll all be over soon....
ILYI
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