Days 15-16: Big Muddy and Land of Lincoln

Sunday broke crisp and clear -a perfect 10 riding day. Grabbed a quick bfast sandwich and coffee and on the road,saying goodbye to the wonderful Al's Place bike hostel. Road east through mixed farm/woodland and even some vineyards (Missouri wine? Who knew?). Truly pleasant riding, not too many hills. After 40 miles the road dropped from the hills onto the Mississippi River floodplain, and the corn and soybeans doubled in height. It seems like a terrible misappropriation of world class fertile land to be growing cattle feed and ethanol feedstock here instead of food to feed the masses, but what do I know? American commodity crop agriculture is such a tangled web of government policy and subsidy it is hard to understand why anything grows where it does, especially out here in the BIG AG states.

As I approached the Mississippi I tried to think of every Grateful Dead/JGB song with the word "river" in it, and Jerry singing Big Muddy River in the soulful way that only he could was stuck in my head. This is fairly typical of the thoughts one has sitting on a 6" leather saddle 8 hours a day.  At times you achieve an almost blissful absence of thought.

Crossed the river, the 100th meridian, the unofficial demarcation between West and East, on a rickety old steel bridge with barely enough vehicle surface for me and two passing cars.  Big Muddy was just that: chocolate brown and swollen with runoff from the north. Killed a little time in Chester IL, the home of Popeye, and continued riding south along the edge of the floodplain. Beautiful massive trees of diverse species lined the banks: oaks, hickories, enormous cottonwoods, tulip trees, magnolias, and the first buckeyes I've seen.

Stayed with Jim and Denise Zaczek south of Carbondale.  J&D were friends from Penn State, and both now teach at Southern Illinois University (whose school mascot is the Saluki, an Egyptian dog breed). Jim is now chair of the forestry dept at SIU, which the second most forestry majors of any university in the country. They were most gracious hosts, and it was great to catch up after nearly 30 years.

Another nice riding day today, similar in topography and physiography to eastern MO, but without the abject rural poverty and angry white redneck thing so visibly pervasive.  Wound my way through bits and pieces of the Shawnee National Forest and several National Wildlife Refuges, evidence I surmise of the bow-tied Senator Paul Simon's long tenure as an AG and Interior appropriator. I felt sluggish starting out but finished strong with 78 miles into the little Ohio River-side village of Elizabethtown. A lovely evening camped by the River's edge behind an old inn/B&B, whose proprietors let me take a shower in exchange for a $5 donation to their church. Nice folks. Had River catfish for dinner in a floating restaurant, watching coal barges go by every 15 minutes. Tomorrow cross the river into Kentucky.