1 am – I’m sure if you live here in the US Mid-West the electrical storm that is firing off all around us isn’t anything to write home about, but for the rest of us this is one almighty storm. For almost an hour the sky has been lighting up with the intensity of a bright summer’s day, accompanied by thunder that you can feel in the pit of your stomach. And while the sound of rain on a tent is one of my favourites, the knowledge that we will be packing this tent up wet in the morning doesn’t fill me with glee. Fingers crossed this has all passed before the alarm goes off in under 6 hours.
4:30 am – We are still being pounded by the storm. Even a couple of RVs next to us seem to have had enough and left the campsite in the past 30 mins.
It seems a good opportunity to mention one item of gear we didn’t compromise on, our tent. Since buying it for our NC500 and JOGLE cycle last year it has handled everything that has been thrown at it, which has come in bucketfuls for the past three and a half hours.
MSR have extended their All Season Tent range, which has been engineered for extreme conditions and challenging environments, and as part of this exciting range they have developed the MSR Access™ 3 Ultralight Tent which is an excellent four season three-person freestanding tent.
6:30 am – The pyrotechnics have subsided, but there is no let-up in the torrential rain and it’s getting worryingly close to the time we need to start preparing to hit the road.
7:00 am – We might as well just get up as we are getting no sleep… on with the day!
While the tent has kept everything inside it dry, the tent itself was packed away soaking. This would make camping this evening uncomfortable, but as we have a hotel booking at our destination in Pontiac, the biggest inconvenience is the additional weight of the wet tent.
We skipped a morning shower for fear of coming out of the shower dirtier than when we went in or even worse, catching the lurgy. Let’s just say we have stayed in better campsites and leave it at that!
We hit the road shortly before 9 am, taking longer to pack up due to the rain than we should have. The rain had stopped just before we left, so we’re able to opt for the hi-viz vests rather than full waterproofs. Dare I say the sun was even attempting to make an appearance as we rode out of sodding campground (both uses of the word sodding can be applied).
The sky remained grey all morning, but did a good job and holding on to its load, with just the odd occasional spot or three.
The first few miles of today’s route took us through a rural landscape with a scattering of wooden farm buildings, but it wasn’t long before we joined The Wauponsee Glacial Trail, a green corridor lines with corn on one side and wild uncontrolled vegetation on the other.
On any other morning, this trail would have been a pleasure to cycle on, however, due to the overnight torrential rain the new limestone grit that had recently been used to resurface the trail was now waterlogged, so it felt more like we cycling along a beach with our brakes on, which is not a good thing.
While the trail was pleasant, today is the day we finally get to cycle Route 66, so we pushed on as hard as we could toward Wilmington.
A few minutes after leaving the trail we came across our first Route 66 road sign since leaving Chicago and a few minutes after that our first Route 66 roadside attraction in the form of the Gemini Giant.
We got chatting to four Australian Route 66 tourists, also taking photographs of the big green guy. As seems to be customary on the route, they enquired where we started from today and where we were heading too. In return for our answer, they share that they had left Chicago that morning in their two Mustangs and where aiming for St Louis tonight, a journey that will take us over ten days.
From Wilmington we remained parallel with Interstate 55, passing through a list of all too familiar names from the planning phase – Braidwood, Godley, Braceville, Gardener, Dwight, Odell, Cayuga and finally our destination for the night, Pontiac.
While time was not in our favour, we had a few stops off along the way to rest our bums and bag a few of the many Route 66 attractions.
In Dwight, we pulled over to the old Texaco Gas Station just as a large group Harley Davidsons went through town, with another gleaming example sat parked up in front of the gas pumps. The gas station is manned by volunteers and we were lucky enough to arrive when Kelly was in duty, who eventually finished answering the questions of those that had arrived earlier, so we could get a few in of our own in, plus a photo without a Harley in the shot (see below).
Unfortunately by the time we had the forecourt to ourselves, we were running late to make it to Pontiac before dark, so a quick photoshoot, with the assistance of Kelly, and we were off. Kelly also took a photograph of us with the plan to make us famous by having them published in the local newspaper.
Pushing on hard we arrived at our hotel in Pontiac around 6:30 pm, to a closed motel office and a sign requesting we phone a number. Just at this time a silver car, driven by Lynn, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, showed up and introduced himself as both a cyclist and Route 66 custodian.
While chatting with Lynn the manager of the motel appeared (she had been taking her dog for a walk) to check us in. Even though the room had been booked through booking.com, the manager had no record of that, but luckily had one room available, although no working card machine. After renegotiation the price down to $40 by pleading a lacking of paper currency, we had our keys for the night.
Lynn had offered to take us into town for food, so we hastily dumped our bikes into the room and jumped into Lynn’s car. A quick guided tour of the main Pontica Route 66 sights, all now on tomorrow’s to-do list, and we found ourselves in Mario’s Pizza restaurant. Pizza ordered, Lynn shared with us story after story of cycling and Route 66, with the evening passing all too quickly and our jetlag starting to kick in all too soon, as we could have happily talked with Lynn all night.
We are now back in our room, I which hastened to add gives the Dome Hotel Riyadh and last night’s campground a run for its money, but at least the bed feels comfortable and we don’t need to worry about hanging our tent up to dry for fear of dirtying something.
Hope the tent dried up👍
Thanks. It’s hanging up to dry in our hotel room right now… making the room feel like a sauna, but a small price to pay for a dry tent next time time we need it! 🙂
Meant to inquire if you’ve considered carrying a few power bars or gels with you in case you are in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat so you can carry on? Seems you do seem to find edible items and don’t want to carry weight so am figuring you just like the adventure of eating what you find.
Yup.. we just eat what we find at the moment. There are some longer sections through New Mexico and Arizona that we will require a little more planming, but taking it as it comes just now.