Saturday, May 18th – Day 46 – Rest day in Springfield

Best part of the day:     Fay’s inner thigh issue a lot better!

Worst part of the day: Today’s afternoon thunderstorm

Distance: 0                     Riding Time: 0hrs 0min

Bed count: 26                Sleeping Bag count: 20

Felt good to get up when we wanted as there was no reason to get going. We’ve felt pretty lucky so far in that we’d been able to dodge the storms and take a days off when needed at the same time. That’s the one real nice thing about riding self-supported as you set your own schedule. And if it’s raining, you don’t have to ride.

So far, we’d only once had to take out our rain jackets. And that was when it was looking like rain on our day out of Santa Fe, but, wound up being hailed upon! We hope we’re not jinxing ourselves.

It was nice to sleep on our host, Miles’, nice pull-out sofa that fit us just right. One of their cats, Dusty, was up early scratching at the sofa near Rob’s head. Both of the cats are so sweet and gentle, but, can be rambunctious. They’re brother and sister and they get along very well.(Our companions for these last two days: Ty (top) and Dusty.)

When Fay was down in the basement retrieving the family towels, they would love to jump inside the dryer. She had to literally take them out because they just wanted to lay inside it! First, Dusty jumped in when Fay took out their load and then the other cat, Ty, jumped in when she was putting our load in. They’re inside cats and they love to sit at the window and watch the birds fly around their big trees in the front and back yards.

We worked couple of hours on our upcoming days. Did some tweaking here and there of our route distances knowing that we’ll be riding into headwinds. So, we shorten some of those days. And then we tried to figure on when we’d be arriving into Chicago so we could purchase our Amtrak tickets for home.

We’re anticipating getting there on May 30th, if the weather permits. So we booked pretty much the only day that was available to have 2 coach seats, Saturday, June 1st. All the other days both before and after the 1st were booked most likely because of graduations and Memorial Day. We even checked for availability as far out as June 5th with no luck!! So we’re hoping and hoping that all goes well for the rest of the trip so we can arrive in Chicago no later than the 31st and make our train for the ride home the next day.

Around noontime, we decided to go to Walmart about 1.3 miles away to get a couple of things for the next few of days. We knew the storm was coming in around 3pm and wanted to be back by then. We used one of Miles’ car as he said we could. Again, how great was that! The area was under a severe tornado watch up until 5pm.

The storm finally hit around 3:45. No tornado or hail, just thunder and heavy rain. Rob checked the radar on his phone and saw that this system extended northward from at least central Texas to what looked like southern Minnesota and sliding to the east! That’s got to be at least 700+ miles long!!

Just like here in Springfield where we had originally planned to camp at the KOA, the storm dictated that we’d have to look for a hotel. Well, because of the local college’s graduation, a lot of them were very expensive. So we were extremely grateful for our Warm Showers family for allowing us to be their guests.

Dinner was the rest of our last night’s leftover Chinese food. It was good and more than enough. For dessert? What else but cookies!! P&J would love that

Tomorrow, we begin our 5 “saints” ride days: first Lebanon (obviously not a “saint”), then St. Robert, St. James, St. Clair, and finally St. Louis! Hopefully we’ll be “blessed” with decent riding weather!

Until our next post….

P.S. Rob sends a Happy 70th Birthday to YES keyboard wizard, Rick Wakeman!!