"Hey, ya wanna keep going???
"Hey, ya wanna keep going???
The third weekend in April found neither Jeff nor I having plans already, which these days is an oddity. We decided to get away for the weekend, ride over to the Mississippi and do a little camping as a season opener.
I met Jeff at his house at about 8:30 AM on Saturday, and was running a little late - but not as late as Jeff. "I've been up for 5 minutes," he said, still suffering from a lack of coffee. After a couple cups of Joe, we headed west towards Galena. Nothing terribly exciting as far as roads go, but it was great just to be out and riding. We stopped at a little roadside restaurant for breakfast and were delighted to see the "$4.95 Breakfast Buffet" sign. Damn, this day is starting out well.
After breakfast, we started across on The Stagecoach Trail, an alternate road into Galena, which in all the years of riding this way, we had never hit before. The road was nice, and we made pretty good time, despite Jeff's back-to-back blown turns. When he blew the second one, I didn't even chase him down....I just made the turn and stopped, figuring he'd eventually figure it out. Hey - it's my fault for letting him lead anyway, but sometimes I do that just so that I have something to write in these reports.
After a quick stop in Galena to take a look at the nature photography gallery, which I have to say was absolutely specatacular and makes me want to take some photography classes, we continued over into Iowa to take route 52 south along the river. The ride was very nice, as usual, and a thanks goes out to the light-flashing car who warned us about the cop sitting up ahead - good thing too, he was sitting on the exit of a nice sweeper, and we would have been nailed for sure, especially since we'd never seen a cop on this road before.
We followed the river almost all the way to the Quad Cities before jumping on the Interstate for about 10 minutes to avoid the downtown area and head back into Illinois. Next thing we know, we're heading west on I-80.....and I start thinking, "Hmmm, it's only about 700 miles to Colorado." I motion to Jeff "Hey, wanna keep going" and he already had the thought in his head. I watched in anticipation as he continued on I-80 until the very last second before turning onto the off-ramp for I-280 south. I then pulled along side of him, and gave him the "two two" signal, and pointed to the sign that read "route 22, 5 miles." I got a nod of OK, and thought that he understood....yet he blew the turn anyway. D'oh!! No big deal - I let him lead again, and we just took the next one, but again, I need filler here.
After crossing back into Illinois, we headed south along the river, and after stopping at a convenience store for some beers and snacks, we scouted for campgrounds. After looking for the third one on the map, and not being able to find it, we went back to the very first one and grabbed a campground just a stone's throw away from the mighty Mississippi. After setting up camp, we broke out the beers, gathered up the firewood, started cooking the food, and telling stories. After a few beers, we were both pretty tired, and I think I was asleep that night before my head hit the pillow.
The next day, we awoke to overcast skies, and I thought for sure we'd hit rain. Luckily, we didn't. We had some serious EST that day, and we made it home by 3:00, which isn't too bad, especially since we took all backroads. We stopped at Starved Rock park for a while before making the final jaunt home. Again, there was nothing too terribly exciting about the roads, but just being out there and camping out was a great way to spend the only free weekend that we both had.
