We stopped off in Elkhart, IL (population 450) for lunch. We had something called "pork fritters" and ravaged the salad bar repeatedly. It was a nice small town, but I think people there found us odd.
Over the past few days, I have found it humorous the way in which various towns along old 66 each try to stake out their claim on Abraham Lincoln differently. Some towns, like Lincoln, IL have seemingly legitimate claims like "named for and christened by Abraham Lincoln." Talking small town politics last night in Mclean, we discovered that their mayor had recently (to everyone's displeasure) purchased an old barn for $75,000 that supposedly had Lincoln's signature on the wall. Keeping track of these claims quickly became impossible.
After lunch, the complete monotony of 66 set in and put both Will and me to sleep on the bikes, eventually resulting in a wheel-overlap crash. Will went down hard (and slid a few feet down the pavement), resulting in abrasions to his knee and shoulder, a tear on his shirt, and some damage to his bike that I managed to repair while he recovered. He is OK.
After that, riding wasn't easy and the remaining miles to Springfield didn't pass quickly. Still, we got to our motel by 3:00, leaving us plenty of time to rest as we had planned.
I feel extremely refreshed, already.
Tomorrow, we want to ride 80 miles west, ending just 10 miles east of the Mississippi river!
We've ridden: 50 today/235 so far/2265 to go.
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