Day 26

After a second night of sound sleeping, I was still up pretty early, after only about 6 hours of sleep. Normally I like to get a full 8 hours of sleep, but there have been plenty of nights on this trip when I've gotten less than that. However, it doesn't seem like it's been a problem. My theory is that the time on the bike works as a substitute for sleeping, since in both cases the brain isn't doing too much active work.

So Denise and I both rolled out of the house together around 8:40. In addition to her top-notch hospitality for the two nights, she also sent me out the door with the remaining polka-dot cookies and a banana. Oh, and a refill of my little olive oil bottle too. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, I guess I could ask for great weather too, and I got it. The third perfect blue-sky day in a row. The early part of the day involved going across St. Louis, from the south to the north. It was actually a pretty nice city crossing, and I think I got a good feel of the area. In many ways I was reminded a lot of the neighborhoods of Chicago. There are a lot of bungalow communities, and even the "suburbs", like Affton where Denise lives, are mostly older neighborhoods; maybe I just got lucky with the streets I took, but I encountered very little sprawl.

Eventually the city thinned out, and shortly after that the bridge across the Mississippi to Alton appeared. Just like at Cape Girardeau, the only state border sign was a standard highway sign in the middle of the bridge, but since this bridge had a dedicated bike lane, I could at least stop and take pictures. And then I made my eleventh and final state border crossing.

On Denise and Greg's recommendation, I stopped at Fast Eddie's Fried Chicken stand in Alton for lunch. I got a burger instead of chicken, but they were right: it was cheap, and it was good. Then I went over to the library for a while, where I wrote the previous day's journal entry, flipped through a copy of the Chicago Tribune, and did a little more research. Then it was on to stock up on groceries. Way back in the little grocery store in Norris, TN, I had picked up a bag of Regal "Energy Mix" trail mix. I guess it's just a fairly standard trail mix (various nuts, various seeds, raisins, chocolate pieces), but it was so good. I've been looking for it in every store I've gone into since, and I finally found it at Schnucks today! So I bought another bag of "Energy Mix" and another slightly different mix that I haven't tried yet (I forget the name). It's actually made in Chicago, so I'm going to have to look for it there too.

After all that messing around, it was already 3:15, and I'd done just over 30 miles. Kind of like my last day of riding into St. Louis. But today was scheduled to be a short day, so that was just fine. Once I cleared out of Alton, the Illinois farm fields began, and seeing them actually made me feel "at home" more than any time in the trip. The only annoying thing was going by the combines working in the corn fields. They kick up a cloud of fine dust, and I really had to put my sunglasses close to my face and squint hard to keep the stuff out of my eyes.

Only three miles from Beaver Dam State Park, a tiny roadside store miraculously appeared in the middle of the cornfields, and I was able to buy 24 ounces of cold Budweiser. The state park itself is kind of stuck in the middle of cornfields, but there are plenty of trees around within the park. There is a separate tent camping area, but first I went over to the trailer area to check out the shower facilities. I ended up having a nice talk for quite a while with an older couple who were camping there and who have a daughter in Chicago. Eventually I went back to the tent area, picked out a nice $8 site, and was able to cook up my couscous with tomato and set up the tent just before the sun went down.