Thursday, June 9th
‘Are you a coffee drinker?’. Asked Dave from his golf cart, leaning forward just slightly, but remaining seated. One of his dogs jumped up and sat with him as he went back to his house and returned with a large, rusted metal flask with a small sticker which read “Rugged American”. “That’s from my trucking days”, he said as he placed it on the picnic table next to me. That little sticker seem fitting given I’d been told Dave had had a stroke a few years ago and driven himself to the hospital. He didn’t look 82. His whole story and everything seemed to fulfil my cliched idea of America people like this.
I drank several cups of coffee, finishing he flask, and spoke with a mother and daughter who had arrived late the night before and were driving from Boston to Vancouver.
I left the campsite finally at around 9.30 and said goodbye to Dave and his dog. Rain began to fall just as I set off and it became steadily heavier. I stopped in North Utica, the town I’d come through the day before on the way to the state parks, just a couple of miles down the hill. I found a cafe and ordered breakfast and more coffee and wrote and waited for the rain to pass. By 11 it was almost clear.
On my way out of town I stopped in a shop next door which sold everything from American Indian dolls, to grotesque eagles carved out of wood, and patches which said things like ‘Motobikes and Jesus – a way of life’. I didn’t fully understand biker culture, or the aesthetics of it at least.
Over the course of the morning and early afternoon I went from being back on the canal, then the route 6, then more canal paths. I headed south-west, aiming for Bradford, a town which was on the Northern Tier where I could rejoin the route.
“Where you cruisin to my man?”…”Oh my lordy” went the exchange with a Big Lebowski-esque American man as he stepped out of his pickup outside the gas station store in Depue where I stopped about 30 miles in. One of two or three small towns I went through which had not much else to them other than a single gas station and a handful of residents. There wasn’t much reason to stick around past the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.
Later on came Tiskilwa. ‘The gem of the valley’ announced a sign with a Native American painted on. I could tell from the name there was more history to this place and in the modern day it seemed like a friendly little place. A main Street running through, like a lot of these places, a post office, a gas station, some places for fixing cars, maybe one or two bars, and a couple of places to eat.
Though it’s difficult to articulate precisely what I liked about it you could say It had character, which had been hard to say for many small places I found myself in.
I stopped at the gas station and drank a pineapple Fanta outside. It was hot now. And the main conversation I’d overheard at the places I’d stopped was how hot the next day was going to be. 94 was the number being banded around.
I lingered a bit around the town to take some photos then headed out, uphill, and so began a new kind of scenery – endless windswept fields and telegraph poles. Windfarms and the occasional hill top cemetery.
I had a tailwind when I was heading west and all these things flew by without much time to dwell on why they were there.
I reached Bradford had coffee and left. It was one of those places.
I aimed for a campground about 25 miles away, but forget that I have an hour less to cycle now I’m on Illinois time, so instead picked out a state park – the Johnson Sauk Trail State Park, which seemed like it would offer camping.
On the road I passed another cyclist. He was heading out for a ride from the nearest big town – Kewanee. We stopped and had a conversation across our bikes right in the middle of the road, which is one convenient advantage of cycling in the middle of nowhere.
The last 10 miles to the park nearly broke me. I had to head north again and climb and descend about eight large hills. Just as I’d reach the top of one, the next one would appear like a wall in front of me on the horizon. It was almost comical how each one seemed a little bigger than the last. I had no energy and the light was begin to fade. The sky was a mix of sunset and thunder clouds.
I cleared the last hill, and headed west again for the last few miles Into the park. The wind carried me to an area for tent camping, apparently you had to register but I didn’t know where and since it was after 8 and the whole place felt quiet, I just found a spot in the designated area and made it mine. Two other families were camping near by but I was too tired to offer much other than grunt to them. It was still hot and I needed a showered but it would be a free nights camping and I couldn’t complain.
I made a basic dinner from the three ingredients I had: dry pasta, cheap red sauce, and a pepper.
As the darkness fell I saw fireflies around the trees and tall grass, appearing and disappearing like morse code. Children played, men drank beer, and I slept.
Map
