Reading Time: < 1 minute Despite ongoing threats of rain, nothing yet. When the rains do come, I’m sure it will be at the most inconvenient time—for me, anyway. I dragged myself across the highway to Walmart last night and stocked up on soup, crackers, protein bars, and trail mix. I also bought a small container of melon chunks, which I […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes I can’t help but take the condition of the roads personally. Especially when the designers and builders take a perfectly good shoulder and turn it into a nightmare. For me, anyway! Some brilliant person decided that Hwy 50 in Illinois needed rumble strips that run perpendicular to the road across the entire shoulder. For miles. […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Flies harassed me for over 5 hours today. No let-up. I left the motel at 5:40 am and had planned on staying at a B&B in Lawrenceville, but they had no vacancy. I called another place and tried to make a reservation, but they didn’t pick up the phone. So when I saw a sign […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute I’ve learned that the day goes best when I get a really early start. So that’s what I did today. I was on the road by 5:40 am, and walked 22.7 miles to the Super 8 in Olney, Illinois. It’s certainly a budget hotel and not up to the level of last night’s Best Western, […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Early to bed and early to rise means an early breakfast. The breakfast room opens at 6, and that’s when I was there. Often I’ll bring food back to my room, but the Weather Channel was on the TV instead of Fox News, so I stayed at a table and ate Raisin Bran with milk, […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute From the Days Inn in Salem to the Best Western in Flora is 28 miles. It was a long walk. I left Salem at 5:50 am knowing I’d be on the road a long time, and finally arrived in Flora at 6:55 pm—13 hours total (including few short breaks along the way). Had I seen […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Today was a double challenge. Rain and itching. It rained incessantly, and the gravel shoulder was frustrating. I was on and off US-50 for hours. Eventually the sun came out and the shoulder got wider. Throughout all this, I was dealing with the itching from what I’d realized were bedbug bites, most likely from insects […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute I finally had an encounter with a tick. But as I would find out later, that was the least of my problems. I’m in Carlyle, Illinois at the Centerstone Inn, situated near a McDonalds, a Walmart, and a recreational lake area. I was eating lunch at the desk in my motel room and noticed the tick […]