Thursday, July 16th
We got up early and hit the road in an attempt to miss the morning rush-hour traffic of St. Louis.
By early, I’m talking about on the road at 7-ish. It went fairly well until I had a momentary brain lapse and did not register part of a three-lane-wide road sign. It was the part with the number I was looking for. Oh well. We executed a U-turn, went back, made another U-turn, and then tried it again. All in morning rush-hour traffic. Got it right the second time.
Around mid-morning, the GPS was telling me to get off of the interstate and take Illinois Hwy #3, even though we could follow interstates all the way from here. I was feeling adventurous, so I took the exit and Brian followed. We hit construction with a milled road surface before we even got off the exit ramp. Great. This mess continued for about 5 miles. But by then we could tell we were starting to get out of the urban area and into a more rural setting. We liked that better.
About 45 miles away from the interstate, we went through Chester, IL, home of Popeye the Sailor Man.
Shortly thereafter, we realized we were on the Great River Road, a scenic byway that runs along the mighty Mississippi. We followed this for 10-15 miles. The road ran along the back edge of the flat floodplain along the river. There were some low wooded hills to the left of the road, a broad expanse of flat fields, and then some trees along the river’s edge. This might be a neat byway to explore in the future.
We eventually turned east to pick up I-57 and head south into TN. We stopped to gas up just before the interstate and decided to swap bikes for a while. We had talked about this for days but hadn’t gotten around to trying it yet. We had slightly different setups on our bikes, so we were both curious to see how much different they really were.
After the swap, I added a few things to my motorcycle wishlist – a different seat, windscreen, tune-up, etc. Brian decided he wants the handlebar risers back he took off his bike and loaned me.
We rolled through Nashville, TN, and then headed east on I-40.
Our goal was Panther Creek State Park just east of Knoxville. As we approached it over the last 30 miles or so, we kept our eye on a nasty black thundercloud that seemed to be building up over the area where the park was. Shortly after we pulled in, it started to sprinkle rain. We quickly threw up the tent and then ate supper – the second half of our lunch subs. The rain didn’t last long, and we had a nice evening chatting and preparing for tomorrow’s ride home and the end of our trip.
| Mileage | |
| Today | 561.5 |
| Trip Total | 4,831.8 |
