Trip days: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8-9 | 10-12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38
39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51

Day 41 - 5/31

Today I got an especially late start, clawing my way off the couch at an early 1:30pm. I did a little bit of laundry and made a bunch of MP3 cds for Keith. We went to a tasty little mexican hole in the wall for lunch, said our farewells, and I embarked from Chicago on the home stretch at the exceptionally late hour of 5:30pm.

I went west on I-55 S and seeing gray clouds near the I-80 interchange I prematurely got off of I-55 and rode west on highway 52, then north on highway 23 and then west on highway 92 all the way to Davenport on the Illinois/Iowa border. I was then briefly on I-88, then around Davenport on the I-80 beltway, and then west on I-80 to highway 38. I headed north on highway 38 through Tipton, and then went west on highway 30 to Mount Vernon where I called it a night and got a cheap motel room for the night.

Northwestern Illinois and eastern Iowa are nice in a rolling countryside sort of way -- everything is green, the climate is perfect at a comfy 60-70 degress, the crops are just beginning to take off, and the landscape is dotted with little outcroppings of trees surrounding working farm houses and rustic looking barns, grain silos, and small windmills. For some reason I always pictured this area of the country as flat, but I was suprised to see that it is pretty much all low rolling hills. There were some especially nice areas around the Mississippi River at the border of Illinois and Iowa -- nice green forested areas on the water.

Total Mileage for Day: 235
Mileage on Odometer: 27,076