Day 3 - Vincennes, IN to Chillicothe, MO

CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S ROUTE

I slept really hard last night and woke up 15 minutes before the alarm at 4:45. I walked across the parking lot for a cup of gas station coffee, and got the morning routine going. Coffee, shower, pack, load bike, fuel, go. I was in a motel with an exterior entrance with the bike parked right in front, so the loading didn't take quite as long today. 
The first state line crossing was only 3 miles away, and I got a time bonus as well! I had forgotten that I was crossing a time zone this morning, so I got an hour bonus today! It was still dark enough that I had to light up the Welcome to Illinois sign with the  headlight.

A few miles on highways then some zig-zagging back roads to get a bit northwest. There aren't really too many options to go diagonally across Illinois, so I picked a bunch of small county roads... west then north, then west then north... what I hadn't planned on as that the roads went from paved to dirt to paved to dirt.. mostly the east-west ones. This added a bit of time to the route today but wasn't too bad at all. The only hairy part was coming up to an intersection of a paved and dirt road (I was on the dirt portion) - there was a softer bit of dirt, and I came pretty close to dropping the bike. Deep breath and move on. I said I had wanted to ride the back roads on this trip - I certainly found those today.

After finally getting back to pavement, it was only an hour or so to the first kitsch stop of the day! 

This giant dragon was build as an advertisement for a local propane company. You can go into the liquor store across the street and buy a token for 1 dollar that makes the dragon do this:

From there, it was on to Litchfield, where I hopped on to Historic Route 66 for a few miles. This was actually a surprise to me, I did not realize that the route I had mapped included this. Nice surprise for the morning!

I'll see Route 66 again when I am in Oklahoma in a few weeks. I turned straight west again and was soon DEEP into farmland. The scenery went back and forth from corn as far as you could see to soybeans as far as you could see. Surprisingly, this wasn't boring at all. I really enjoyed this part of the day.

After many, many miles of scenery like above, I started to see more trees and the hills rolled a little more. All of a sudden the road descended down a pretty steep hill, and there was a river in front of me. I am pretty sure this will be the only ferry crossing of the trip. I just wish it had been the Mississippi River. This was the Illinois.

Not too long after that, I did cross the Mississippi - but on a bridge. A pretty cool bridge though.

Into State number 5!!!

From here it was north for a bit into Hannibal, MO, then straight west on US 36 for 120 very windy miles to where I would stop for the night. The Home of Sliced Bread!

Miles ridden today - 395

Miles ridden total - 1089

States today - Indiana, Illinois, Missouri

States total - North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri