Up early with the intention of putting in the extra miles that we didn’t do yesterday after the best night’s sleep on the trip so far. While Route 66 borders the campground and the Interstate is within sight, the campground was quiet as a quiet thing.
Another reason for not getting away as soon as we would have wished is down to talking too much with the campground owners, Chris and Belinda. Well, that’s why we are doing this cycle… it’s certainly not for the aching legs and sore bum, that’s for sure. The couple had taken over the site a year ago, having moved to Illinois from Florida and were clearly taking a lot of pleasure from the site, which showed.
We were welcomed to Litchfield with the sight of a Wal-Mart, although no Western Union. Twenty minutes later we were stocked up on food (crisps) and drinks (Gatorade) and were ready for the day.
The going continued to be relatively easy with little scenic variation from the previous couple of days. We have been told the scenery will change dramatically as we head south and west, but I guess we are going too slow to notice much yet.
The cycling is broken most days with Route 66 roadside attractions, some more noteworthy than others, today being no exception.
Some of these are in the form of genuine leftovers from the day’s the Route 66 was a busy road, such as the Shell gas (petrol) stations in Mount Olive and Henry’s Rabbit Ranch in Staunton. Other distraction included a large rocking chair and countless houses decorated ready for Haloween, yes, already!
There was no real plan for where we would sleep tonight, so started to scout the area when we were close to Granite City and more specifically the Chain of Rocks Bridge, stopping every now and then to check the cycle computer and consult Google Maps.
On one such stop, we met Kenny, a retired Illinois State Policeman riding his redundant trike. Yes, it does seem that every Illinois retiree has a recumbent trike. Kenny’s parting words were for us to be careful in East St Louis, not too far from where we were now looking to spend the night as dusk was approaching.
Granite City itself was very industrial, which didn’t look much like a holiday destination with a choice of campground, although there were three showing on the map.
The first site we went in was a dustbowl with monster RVs pulled up together with not a metre between them. The second wasn’t even worth a visit so it wasn’t looking good.
We finally located the third campground in the area down an industrial lane, which turned out to be a US National branded site – KOA or Campgrounds of American. Shhh, don’t tell them, they may never realise!
The site was quite costly, at $30 per night, seeing as there was no shop and the pool doesn’t open until 10am tomorrow, but with little option, we handed over a few notes from our dwindling cash supply and we were sorted.
With the tent up we headed back out to the main road where we found a US institution – Hardee’s. It was that or the Waffle House, which looked even less appealing.
While waiting for our cheese and bean burrito, killing time by staring at the other 99% of the menu that had a distinct chicken theme, a chap that had just ordered his meal deal asked if we needed money, offering us the change for his order. We said we were fine and had just ordered, explaining our look and smell was down to us cycling all day, but he didn’t look convinced. Boy, we must have looked rough and smelled worse.
With dinner done we headed back to the tent before the mosquitos could enjoy feasting on us more than we did a Hardee’s cheese and bean burritos, but that would not be hard.
It was not going a comfortable night as the heat and humidity in the tent was unbearable, but with the wee sods all around us trying to suck our blood we had little choice other than batten down the hatches and hope for the best.