Day 16 – Paducah, KY to Carbondale, IL

Quadruple digits! We officially passed 1,000 miles today. Our reward? Rain and a brisk north wind.

Started out the morning in the MCC and in Art’s car heading over the Ohio. Once again, JP and I agreed on a 7am time to leave the hotel, and once again we were about 20 minutes late 🙂 I think that’s pretty much our rounding error each morning. At this point, we’ll call that “normal”.

We weren’t on the official ACA route at the beginning, so we rode up IL State Route 145 until we hooked up the real route. Rt 145 was a 20 mile shot straight north through southern Illinois. On that 20 mile stretch we had some hills, some wind, some heavy truck traffic, and rain. Some serious rain, actually. Looking at the radar this morning, it was obvious there was a low pressure centered just a few miles to our east and rain was rotating around the center. We were just left of center so that meant we were going to get winds from the north most of the day with intermittent rain showers. And wouldn’t’ you know that “north” was our primary direction today. Here we are optimistically leaving for the day without our rain gear on. That changed within the first hour.

For those readers paying attention, you’ll remember that we actually went in to Illinois yesterday to check the bridge crossings. Today we officially crossed in to the state, so we’ll put the Mr. Blurry Cam photo in this post. Yay! Illinois.

We started the ride in the town of Metropolis. Yep, not kidding. That’s a river town in southern Illinois. And unsurprisingly there’s a Superman museum there. While we were on the road too early to hit the museum, Heidi took the boys to check out the cool statues anyway. Here’s the Man of Steel standing guard over the city (town? hamlet?) of Metropolis.

Our first rally point of the day was in Simpson. Every time someone said “Simpson” at least one of my kids said “Doh!” or “WooHoo!”. So, yeah, they’re clearly my kids. Heidi snapped this photo, once again risking life and limb. But it wasn’t the weather causing issues this time. Nope, it was her own doing. She wanted a good shot of the PO sign, so she stood on top of the rear seat of the MCC and leaned out the door in the rain. Not an OSHA approved shooting position.

 

The rest of the ride was mostly uneventful. The wind stuck around and we had intermittent rain. The last 2 miles were more downhill than up, but there were so many rolling hills you couldn’t really tell. At some point we passed a sign that said “Hilly Terrain” and I wanted to rip it out of the ground. Tomorrow we’ll ride about 25 miles on the banks of the Mississippi, so at least we’ll get some flat riding in. However, tomorrow afternoon is also the start of the Ozarks so I anticipate our flat-landness will be short lived.