Utica, IL to Bourbonnais,
IL
68 miles
"There sure is a lot of corn in Illinois." [Mark Bazerman]
"That's to feed all the pigs in Iowa." [Mike Weston]
We survived the rain overnight. It was fairly strong, but there wasn't much wind so there was no tent damage and not much leakage. The upside to this was that we had a tailwind most of the day, and everyone arrived in camp by about 2:30pm.
Today was also Chuck Bair's birthday, which he graciously spent driving the Chuckwagon and looking out for us, as he always does.
Here Dave Wallace has a private moment in the U-Haul:
This is the forested road along the Illinois river, near the start of
today's ride:
Here is the Illinois River itself, not much later:
This is a fairly typical shot of farmland from today's ride (although
we also saw more suburban landscape today that we have in a long time):
Chuck Blair blows out his birthday candles (clockwise from far left,
Tsung-Pao Chien, Sandra White, Brian Holsenbeck, Rob Christian, Deb Klein
(standing), Win Westervelt, and Chuck Blair):
Chuck shows the shorts that the Bike America Tours (BAT) group gave
him (BAT, Batman, get it?):
