After a hilly start to the day, it was miles & miles of west - north grid patterns heading through some proper rolling land, covered in wild grasses, flowers & trees...
We set off from Siloam this morning & returned down the 59 to the TAT, it took us over a small range of hills to the west of Westville that were great fun, a mix of beautiful sweeping tarmac & lovely twisty little gravel tracks that eventually ran alongside the Illinois River. This was obviously a big holiday/play spot for the locals, they were out in hordes, all in the river in canoes & big rubber dinghies, (I now just wanna say 'Rubber Dinghy Rapids Man in an Indian accent quite a few times! :-)), anyhoo, we took a bit of GoPro footage of this, so I'll pop the link here.
After this we stopped off for fuel at the Illinois River Stores, which were pretty cool & full of locals & tourists heading to the river for the day.
Once we passed out of this are, the prairie lands started to unfold, we came through a great bit which was a dirt track past some cows, the scenery just rolled on for miles with grass land & blue sky peppered with big fluffy cumulus clouds for as far as the eye can see... bloody magic! Gopro Vid Link
We haven't seen much wildlife the last couple of days, but today we've seen loads, loads of birds such as Scissor Tailed Flycatchers, Turkey Vultures, a bright red little bird I've yet to identify & a bright blue one too, both that fly into the hedgerows... plenty of squirrels, a couple of what looked like Groundhogs & tons of birds of prey, which again I'll have to look up. We've also seen our first Long Horn cattle & some Highland cattle ironically. The landscape for the last couple of days has been made up of either Sandstone or Limestone. The Limestone is predominant & looking at its make up I'm wondering whether there would be any good cave systems around. There is also lots of oil & gas stuff going on, you see the pumps in the fields & various pipes sticking out of the ground all over the place. At one point we rode through a limestone quarry area, this must be where some of the stone comes from that makes up the white gravel tracks, parts of it are still being quarried, we saw warning signs for blasting alongside the trail & other old bits were now being used as landfill sites, not so pretty but again a well used landscape.
GopPro river crossing Vid Link
This proper cowboy country with folk wearing the hats n all!!
We also passed a US Airforce model jet that we just had to get a picture of & the Chicken found a creek named after it, so we stopped for a piccy of that too!! :-)
Oh some things we've noticed in this state, it's not a legal requirement to wear a helmet when riding a bike & you can't buy alcohol in the diners, nowhere will sell alcohol on a Sunday.
We've just heard that the Nevada & Oregon sections of the trail have been washed away or burnt out in big floods and/or forest fires, so we're gonna have to keep an eye out as to any updates on trail stuff or do a diversion & maybe head south west down towards California. We're currently talking to shipping agencies in Tacoma, Long Beach & Oakland to gauge prices & work out logistics, so I guess this will impact upon those decisions... Hey hey the fun of travelling on a bike!!
We set off from Siloam this morning & returned down the 59 to the TAT, it took us over a small range of hills to the west of Westville that were great fun, a mix of beautiful sweeping tarmac & lovely twisty little gravel tracks that eventually ran alongside the Illinois River. This was obviously a big holiday/play spot for the locals, they were out in hordes, all in the river in canoes & big rubber dinghies, (I now just wanna say 'Rubber Dinghy Rapids Man in an Indian accent quite a few times! :-)), anyhoo, we took a bit of GoPro footage of this, so I'll pop the link here.
After this we stopped off for fuel at the Illinois River Stores, which were pretty cool & full of locals & tourists heading to the river for the day.
Once we passed out of this are, the prairie lands started to unfold, we came through a great bit which was a dirt track past some cows, the scenery just rolled on for miles with grass land & blue sky peppered with big fluffy cumulus clouds for as far as the eye can see... bloody magic! Gopro Vid Link
We haven't seen much wildlife the last couple of days, but today we've seen loads, loads of birds such as Scissor Tailed Flycatchers, Turkey Vultures, a bright red little bird I've yet to identify & a bright blue one too, both that fly into the hedgerows... plenty of squirrels, a couple of what looked like Groundhogs & tons of birds of prey, which again I'll have to look up. We've also seen our first Long Horn cattle & some Highland cattle ironically. The landscape for the last couple of days has been made up of either Sandstone or Limestone. The Limestone is predominant & looking at its make up I'm wondering whether there would be any good cave systems around. There is also lots of oil & gas stuff going on, you see the pumps in the fields & various pipes sticking out of the ground all over the place. At one point we rode through a limestone quarry area, this must be where some of the stone comes from that makes up the white gravel tracks, parts of it are still being quarried, we saw warning signs for blasting alongside the trail & other old bits were now being used as landfill sites, not so pretty but again a well used landscape.
GopPro river crossing Vid Link
This proper cowboy country with folk wearing the hats n all!!
We also passed a US Airforce model jet that we just had to get a picture of & the Chicken found a creek named after it, so we stopped for a piccy of that too!! :-)
Oh some things we've noticed in this state, it's not a legal requirement to wear a helmet when riding a bike & you can't buy alcohol in the diners, nowhere will sell alcohol on a Sunday.
We've just heard that the Nevada & Oregon sections of the trail have been washed away or burnt out in big floods and/or forest fires, so we're gonna have to keep an eye out as to any updates on trail stuff or do a diversion & maybe head south west down towards California. We're currently talking to shipping agencies in Tacoma, Long Beach & Oakland to gauge prices & work out logistics, so I guess this will impact upon those decisions... Hey hey the fun of travelling on a bike!!
