Friday, July 03, 2009
Day 18: Terre Haute, IN to Greenup, IL
With the 4th fast approaching and a renewed desire to visit local attractions we decided to take two days riding to Effingham, which would be big enough to have a fun 4th of July celebration. This meant two fairly easy days of riding, with a stay at a Hampton Inn in Effingham (paid for with rewards points from Jillian's parents - thanks!).
Our morning routine usually involved Jillian opening doors for me while I moved the bike and trailer outside. Then she'd go in to do a final check for things we might have left in the room and I'd assemble our trailer. This involved me using both hands to strap down the duffel bag onto the trailer, carefully weaving the bungees through our spare tires. In order to have both hands free, I'd leave the bike set up on the kick stand. Unfortunately, this proved to be too much for our two legged kickstand.
The kickstand actually cracked, causing it to fall over, and bending one of Jillian's handlebars.
I know it looks like I'm pouting in the picture, but in reality I'm kind of happy to be losing another pound of weight. The downside is that it will be a little harder to work on the bike. With the kickstand out and the trailer off the bike wheel is completely off the ground, making it easy to true. Now we'll both need to be there when I work on the bike, plus we'll need to find a tree or something to lean the bike on wherever we are.
We decided that since we weren't going to go that far we might as well tour Terre Haute a little. Our first (and only) stop was at the park along the river. I wandered around while Jillian took pictures.
I also acted out a small part of a scene at Hamlet.
We rode through the swamp to the west of Terre Haute, then climbed a little hill and entered Illinois. There wasn't a sign on our road, but we were close enough to the interstate to take a picture of that one.
For the first time since the Sheetz outside York we stopped for a picnic lunch, this time at a town square in Marshall. All towns in this area, regardless of their size, seem to have amazing courthouses and squares. We also ran into a recumbent rider, who thought recumbents helped fight the wind.
Just after Marshall we passed through a small town that had a junkyard on one side of the road. Jillian spotted a dog running toward us. We tried our new strategy of stopping and getting off the bike. The dog was so glad we stopped and ran over to let us pet him. Except then he wouldn't go away. So I led him away from us by his collar, back to the other side of the road and the junkyard. The dog through this meant I wanted to play, so he jumped up on me a few times. I tried to give him to the junkyard owner, but he said he didn't know whose dog it was. So I returned to the bike, dog walking behind me. We hopped on, trying to ride away, only to have the dog follow us in the road. We tried riding faster, but that just made him want to chase us. So we maced him, leaving him confused and rolling around in the grass. Again, I felt terrible, but that dog was going to get himself killed running in the highway like that.
The rest of the day was pretty flat.
After riding through some empty, if annoying construction, and stopping at a little town to rest a few minutes, Jillian was finally able to get a picture of some birds. She had been trying to take a picture of any bird at all since the beginning of the trip (especially Herons), but had been completely unsuccessful - they always flew away the minute the camera came out. Finally some Turkey Buzzards decided to wait for her.
We arrived in Greenup and stumbled right into our motel, the Greenup Inn. It looked ridiculously scary.
But it was one of only two hotels in town, and the reviews were good. So we checked in, with a very friendly family that ran the place. Imagine our surprise when we saw how nice the rooms were.
We even had cable!
We had some pizza at the pizza shop...
...checked out the porches around much of the town...
...looked at the well Lincoln helped dig...
...and had some ice cream at the soda fountain.
The ice cream place sold some sort of weird green soda. We didn't try it. Afterward, we returned to the hotel room and fell asleep watching Dirty Dancing and listening to people setting fireworks off early.
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| posted at: 09:06 |
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