Iowa and Illinois

Up and running from approaching rain.

Land of corn.

Crossing the Mississippi from Iowa to Illinois.

Another little midwest downtown.

Corn as far as you can see.

Highway from Hell... around the bottom of Lake Michigan on I80 and I94. Look at the trucks!

 Monday, July 25th.

And the corner of Indiana and into Michigan…

I got off to an early start this morning in order to beat the rain coming from the west. I just stuck to Interstate 80 and rode east directly through Iowa and Illinois. I crossed the Mississippi today which seems to divide west from east. Three times today I saw low flying aerobatic crop dusters, two little planes and one helicopter! They were spraying the corn fields and one of them sprayed me… I could smell and taste the chemicals. I wonder what that will do to me. It has been interesting the last few days watching the transitions from Wyoming, to here. Eastern Wyoming was all browns and very barren, with huge ranges for beef cattle; Nebraska started to turn green and gradually there were fields of green mixed in with cattle, but trees didn’t start to appear until Iowa and then there were lots of fields of corn and soybeans and almost no cattle; then eastern Iowa and Illinois were mostly vast fields of corn as far as you could see. Everything went well until I got to just west of Chicago. I had ridden this highway in 2010 in the other direction and hated it then. In fact it was so bad that on the way back I took a ferry across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee to avoid it. Being the optimistic person I am, I rode into it and it hasn’t improved… it was awful! Much of the highway was under various forms of construction and destruction. The pavement was rough and broken in places which made riding bumpy and nerve wracking. I went through a toll booth in Illinois with no attendant…  I am supposed to pay online… Trucks were at least 70% of the traffic and at times it was like riding through the Grand Canyon of semis… and the noise and exhaust! It was the scariest highway ride I’ve done by far. I have been thinking about how I have been very lucky to have not had any traffic problems to speak of the whole trip, but the last two hours made up for it. Then, either because of construction, an accident or both, three lanes were squeezed into one and then I was basically walking my bike up the highway surrounded by trucks. Then there didn’t seem to be any gas stations around and I was over 200kms on the tank which is getting close to max. I knew that running out of gas would be a disaster, so I finally took the next exit and had to backtrack on back roads for 5 km to find a station. That problem solved, I looked for accommodation because it was getting late and the sun was setting. The first place had no vacancy, but thankfully next door was another hotel and they had a room, and a pool, which I made use of before retiring. When I checked in I found I’d gained another hour, back on Toronto time. Another long day of riding… a total of 885 kms today.