The World According To Guitarguy

I’ll dispense with the packing and breakfast stuff……..no waffle at this motel.

I just brewed the complimentary coffee pack in the room and ate a package of cashews that I had secreted in my scooter’s dashboard sometime ago .

As yesterday’s journey started on a sour note, today’s beginning was a dream .

The same route 72 that I traveled the day before went from worn and bumpy to smooth and freshly paved.

The sun shone, the wind had died down and temps were already in the 70’s when I departed from Fredricktown.

I hadn’t been travelling for very long before I had my first roadside double take .

Did I just see a CAMEL ? 

Swinging my bike around and retuning back to the fenced in pasture, YES!, It was indeed a camel .

Photo Op number one .

Lying down amongst about five or six black calves was this adolescent  camel.

Surely this was to be considered a good omen .

I rode 72 through the rolling countryside until heading North on 51 at Patton Junction.

Traffic was at a minimum.

Seeing a sign for a rest area ahead, I thought it would be a good place to scout over my next move on the map.

I pulled onto this gravel road , just as a tired old looking farmer in a pickup truck was pulling out.

He gave me a quizzical look as I passed him .

I rode down a ways before guessing that this was the old guys farm and not the rest area, but it did have a good view of the bridge I’d be crossing the Mississippi on , so at least I got a picture out of the deal.

The rest area turned out to be on the opposite side of the road.

(Ooops) 

51 would take me to McBride and I crossed the Mississippi into the town of Chester Illinois .

Once again my river crossing would be at a narrows , on an old, metal arched, silver structure.

The brown currents were moving pretty swiftly and I did get to view a barge traveling upstream below me.

Photo Op number two awaited me on the other side .

Chester is the “Home of Popeye” !

There was a park immediately after the bridge, complete with a bronze statue of said cartoon hero, a billboard and a comemorative plaque. (see photo link)

I had a ball running around snapping pictures and going Uk Uk Uk Uk Uk!!!!!

From the park,I followed the Mississippi River north on 3 to the town of Red Bud and started my westward migration via route 154.

The routes from here on in the state of Illinois are pretty much set up in a grid pattern, North, South, East, West.

Large farms spread out on either side, sparsely dotted with little towns and an occasional city, marked by those bulbous multicolored water towers.

I followed 154 until it intersected with 51 North, which I then travelled until finding the old East-West truck route 50 right in the middle of the state .

I then rode on route 50 to within ten miles or so of the border.

Now that I look back on today’s decisions, I probably should have stayed the course on 50, right into the state of Indiana.

A weather front was moving down from the top of the states in a southeast direction and had I stayed further south, I might have missed it altogether .

Instead, I decided to take rural route 1 North on the Illinois side, because some force inside me wanted to beeline for home.

I almost payed for that move though.

Route 1 had very few towns, spread a long distance between them and the dark clouds were advancing towards me.

Add one nearly empty tank to the mix and things were starting to look bleak.

I could see that far off in the northern horizon, that the clouds were a bit lighter in color, so I put the screws to it and tried to make it through the imminent rain clouds and over to the other side.

It started to spit droplets as my gas gauge lowered to the last two indicator bars.

It was then that I finally saw the speed limit signs decreasing in mph, which meant a town was nearing .

Sure enough, I found a gas station in the nick of time and the rains were still holding off.

The kid working behind the counter said that I’d find a motel about 15 miles up the road .

With a full tank, I sped off once more, actually making it over to where the skies were not (too) cloudy all day.

I’m now sitting dry at the Relax Inn , located at Marshall IL. , just shy of the Indiana border and not very far from Terre Haute, the town Steve Martin once proclaimed as “The most nowhere place in america”.

We’ll se about that tomorrow………………….