Day 56

Before Lena
A chipmunk visited me in the morning. I looked them up though and apparently they don't eat people either. I got on the road and soon arrived in Lena. No post cards in the first gas station, but the lady there directed me towards the antique shop down the road. Bad idea. It was really cool in there- I probably could have stayed for hours. Their coin collection was in the same case as their card collection. Some seemed well priced, but of course it would be silly to add extra weight and value to my bike. They had used postcards that were really old- I wanted to read through them all. I ended up going with a generic Lena, Illinois post card. The next hour or so sucked. The road had a shoulder for short bit and then it disappeared, and then it was back again, and so on. I had to simply stop several times to make sure that cars didn't have to stop just because I was there. I rode through a lot of grass too. Finally the road turned into a freeway, and I realized it was definitely time to find a different route. I turned and spent a while on nice paved backroads with very little traffic. I had to deal with a dirt road once, but not for long. I got into a big city, Rockford, and I passed by an airport. A bit later, there was a guy biking in the middle of the road, the turn lane. I guess that's kinda smart- cars have to check to make sure they don't hit other cars when they are turning. But I stayed on the side like normal. Soon I passed by what looked like a volcano, but it was a landfill. It smelled fantastic... Not. I peddled a bit faster to get away from the stench. The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. No shoulder, but no traffic either. The lightning bugs are more plentiful here. It was a treat to be able to see them all along the tops on the crops and in the grass on both sides of the road. I saw some trees that would work great for camping, but by the time it was dark enough to turn in, I was so close to the next city that there were none left. I checked google and decided to head down a side road to some trees that were in between two crop fields. I'm sure I was on private property, but there were no fences, and I was out of options. I was hidden from the road, but if someone walked or drove down here, they'd see me for sure. Oh well. The mosquitoes were back. There was also a giant grasshopper that found it's way onto my right front panier. I fell asleep before the storm started.