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Sunday, August 25, 2008, Hazlet Campground, Carlyle Lake, Illinois
After our Bible time, we pedaled east along a nice bike trail and road. Wille, Adriana, and I raced a guy for about 5 miles who passed us. It was kind of funny because he didn’t acknowledge it was a race but everyone knew it was. In the end we won; he pooped out. We saw these big caves about 15 mile past Grafton. Later we saw a very nice Visitor Center for Lewis and Clark. It was very interesting with life-size replicas of various tools and materials they used, lots of information, and even a movie. We couldn’t stay very long, however, because Mom wasn’t answering her phone and would be waiting for us and worrying that we were not there. Near Granite City we all stopped for drinks, and we also decided to finally hose off our mud-caked bikes, dirty since the rainy night ride on Katy Trail (I ended up forgetting my panniers there, and Gloria had to go back and pick them up 20 miles later). Gloria had new tires put on the van and also changed the oil. The kids and I passed a White Castle hamburger place, and since they had never eaten one, we all bought some for snacks. Good, but now they’re 67 cents, when they used to be less than a quarter when I used to buy them. Towards the end of the day, we found ourselves winding our way along country roads, not really passing through towns. With no good place to pitch our tent, we decided to make it all the way to Carlyle Lake, about 15 miles away. So we mounted our headlights on the bikes and went as fast as we could. We ended up going about 8 miles out of our way, but finally made it by around 9:30 pm. After eating and setting up camp, we went to bed. 94 miles.