Keokuk Iowa

These last 2 days have taken us through some pretty flat farmland. We've seen huge fields of corn and soybeans. We had some monster farm equipment pass us on the roads. They say it is for spraying  fungicide on the crops but I think they are filming a Star Wars movie. 

We stopped for coffee at The Filling Station in Milan and the owner is friends with the guy that rides RAGBRAI without a seat so he wanted to talk biking with us. A few miles down the road another guy flagged us down to talk. He had done a Trans-Am ride and was thinking of doing the MRT. It's always fun to talk with other interested bikers and we enjoyed the rest stops. 

After 82 miles yesterday we hadn't been able to find a hotel or even somewhere selling food so we camped in a DNR campground. There was no running water but there were also no fees or other campers. It was actually pretty nice and we had some oatmeal and the rest of our dried Michigan cherries for breakfast. 

We knew there was a town in 20 miles but there were no services. The next town had a Casey's but that was it so we had a slice of breakfast pizza and some Gatorade. We thought we'd stay in Navou. All the motels were full and the town was filled with LDS people so we went on. We went 2 miles out of our way for a total of 60 and crossed the bridge into Iowa to stay in a motel. We really didn't want to go two days without showers. We'll cross back to Illinois tomorrow because while Iowa has services it also has lots of hills. 

We're trying to get to St Louis by Saturday so we can spend some time with our niece, Jane, and her new dog. 

Rock Island

We started yesterday with 25 miles of hills and then we crossed the river into Savannah, Illinois and were greeted by lovely flat prairies. The crossing was about 3 miles of sloughs and then a pretty scary bridge over the main channel. Instead of pavement we had to ride on metal grating with a strong crosswind. The side rail was only hip high and we were quite thankful for the lack of traffic. 

Illinois did not have a sign to welcome us but they had something even better. 60 miles of signed and separated bike trails along the river. A lot of the trail was through wildlife refuge and restored prairies. Very beautiful and relaxing. 

We were at 84 miles when we reached the end of the trail so we stopped in Rock Island. Today's ride should be fairly flat but we won't go through many towns and we'll need to carry some extra food.