Day 19 Week 3, Thursday 8 May 2025

Coverdale Indiana to Casey Illinois, 72 miles and 2200 ft elevation gain.  Another beautiful day of riding.  Started out cool, partly sunny with a slight breeze.  It is definitely getting flatter as we head West, but there are still ups and downs and good rollers where you can pick up some decent speed and ALMOST make it to the top of the next hill.  Roads are mostly free of heavy traffic, but we would occasionally get onto Rt 40 W which was a two lane highway with quite a few trucks and not a decent shoulder.  A lot of farmland- beautiful fields of yellow flowering plants, I think they are rapeseed?  A lot of cornfields cut from last year.   We stopped halfway at Terre Haute, a city midway between Coverdale and Casey.  That is where Indiana State University is, a decent sized town of 60,000.  Than and I were riding together and we stopped at a breakfast place for a real breakfast!  Omelette, hash browns and pancakes!   MMMMM good.   We reached the Illinois State line about 10 miles after that and made great time getting  into Casey pretty early, about 1:30 PM.  We did gain an hour as we passed into Central time today.  Weather was still good in Casey, but black clouds were forming around 3 PM, so I made sure the tent rain fly was on and secure.  Theo and I walked into town to see all the “big” things.  Casey is known for collecting all sorts of outsized items- giant mailbox, giant worm, giant barber pole, giant rocking chair.  They are scattered about town. The town itself is a quaint mid western town, looking like something out of a movie set.   An active railroad runs through it and I stopped to film a train as it went through.  As we were walking around taking pictures of all the big things, it started to get really dark, the rumblings got louder and the wind started to pick up. So we stepped into a barbecue joint and sat outside on the veranda watching the storm approach, eating chicken wings and drinking cherry coke.   The storm hit hard but was over in 20 minutes so we could continue our walk around the city.  Fortunately the other riders made it in and were able to set up their tents just before the storm hit, other than Dennis, our sweep rider, who got in after the storm had passed.  

It’s nice going East to West, not only because you have the sun on your back, as I have mentioned before, but you also gain time going Westward. We have another whole hour and will get yet another when we change to the Western time zone.   The other good thing, with the sun on your back, you are easily visible to on-coming traffic.  

Here are the RidewithGPS stats:

I broke into two segments because I had to restart my GPS halfway through in Terre Haute.