Prophetstown, IL

Friends, I have seen my share of cornfields, and I reckon I have a few more to go. The last several hundred miles have been cornfields on the left and right, with the only occasional breaks being soybeans.

Fortunately, meeting interesting folks breaks up the monotony.  Everywhere I go, there's someone friendly giving me directions or helping me out.  As I was leaving Indiana, I met the Wright brothers, owners of the Wright Ice Cream Company, and inventors of the airplane.  For those of you who know me well, you're aware that ice cream is my only weakness (cough cough...), and that there was no way I would turn down a tour of an ice cream factory!  All of their ice cream is slow-churned, on small machines as old as the company, ~50 years old.  The brothers stuffed me full of ice cream before sending me on my way.  The verdict:

Awesome.

Other than that, I've mostly been plodding along through Illinois.  The wind out of the West is something else - it's easily knocking at least 5 mph off my speed when I turn west as compared to when I head north.

Since I'm just cycling and sleeping, I'll just share a few pictures of what I'm seeing along the way.

  

 

Top Left:  Typical directions.

Top Right : Some places, us peddlers just don't feel welcome...

Bottom Left:  There's a few big fields of these windmills around.  It's hard to get a sense of scale, but if you notice the semi-sized truck near the farm, that drove IN FRONT of the windmill right before I took the shot.

Bottom Right:  I don't know if you can see 'em (the monitor I'm using is fouled up) but there were a half dozen racoons having a family feud in this tree

 

I don't know why this refuses to rotate, but after one of the (many) rains, these little frogs came out on the road and started hopping around by the hundreds.  It was an empty country road, and I was trying to avoid making roadkill, so I'm sure I was a sight to see swerving about avoiding toads.  (It's on my thumb if he's hard to find).

The best things are still the ones you can't capture in a picture...