Muscatine, Iowa to Kewanee, Illinois

Start:  Comfort Inn, Muscatine, Iowa
End:  Kewanee Motor Lodge, Kewanee, Illinois

Mileage:  80 miles
Weather:  Sunny, not too hot

States Conquered:  Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa
States Being Conquered:  Illinois
States to be Conquered:  Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine

Particulars:  A report from Kelly Thompson:  Beautiful day of riding from Muscatine, Iowa to Kewanee, Illinois. Green hills and corn fields for 80 miles. Mid morning to lunch in we set up a pace line to get through gusting head and side winds.

It felt important that we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois today. We now head East (vs South) to the South side of Lake Erie.

The support truck rejoined last night so our load on the bike dropped....lots! Wahoo!

A report from Mike Thompson:  Joe is stopped on the bridge leaving Muscatine, IA.

Interesting People Along the Way:  Things really don't change much over 25 years do they?  For those of you that know us well, know that the phrase "wowonet" tends to float around in our lives.  Well, that phrase started in the home of John and Mary Shullaw.  After Lowell and I were engaged to be married, I travelled with him to Burlington, Iowa to meet his parents for the first time and also meet his good friends, John and Mary.  Very quickly, I picked up on the fact that John and Mary's son Ben, called Lowell "Wowo".  It stuck, and my nieces and nephews started to use the same term of endearment.  Since they were young they never said my full name.  It always came out "Net", so when we married, we became "WowoNet"!

John was Lowell best man at our wedding, and although our visits are few and far between, the bond of friendship never dissipates.  Thank you John and Mary for driving to Kewanee from Burlington to have dinner with us.  Until next time!

Lowell was so excited to have the truck back that he decided to help us clean it out.  Well, we had one problem.  I had purchased some items at Best Buy the day before to try to replace the mount for my Garmin which I left in my car in St. George.  After we got it out of the packaging, I determined that it wasn't going to work.  Rather than do the right thing and put it all away nicely and get it ready to return, I just threw everything in the back seat.  Bad move.  Lowell threw the packaging in the dumpster.  Thank you Hannah for dumpster diving!

A report from Joe Thompson:  We rode from Muscatine, Iowa to Kewanee, Illinois in near perfect weather for a total of 75 miles. All of us remarked at how well the road surfaces rode relative to those in the previous states. Whatever his failings, Governor Blogo has a state with some pretty nice roads in it.

Here are pictures of Lowell and Joe crossing the Mississippi.