Day 55: Gulf Port, IL and CICO

Yesterday was time for us to drive up to the Camp Inn Camp Outt to finally meet a large number of other Camp Inn teardrop trailer owners.  But from Flaming Prairie Campground their seemed to be a dearth of acceptable campgrounds along the route of our first full day heading south on Adventure Cycling's Great Rivers South route.  That would mean that we'd have a very long day riding on our first day back from CICO, unless we could conceive of a way to shorten the distance. 

We pondered that situation for a while (a common use of our time spent sitting around the campfire at night) and decided we'd get some miles in the saddle before piling everything into the van and heading north to CICO.  We decided that we'd each do a leg of a planned 40 mile ride, but that we'd do the riding simultaneously, a departure from our usual routine, which meant that Lana would be alone in the van until Alea made it to my departure point.  To do that, Alea set off to ride the 16 miles to Oakville, while Lana and I drove there.  From Oakville, Lana got a quick walk and a few treats and then I set off on the 24 mile ride to where our route turned south a few miles east of Gulf Port, IL.  Once Alea got to Oakville it was another walk for Lana and then she raced to catch up with me, overtaking me about two miles from our planned rendezvous point.  The result was that we covered the 40 miles in under two hours, and were heading north by 9:30 am.  That gives us options of either a 40 or 55 mile ride for our first day's riding once we rejoin our cycling route (instead of a minimum 80 mile ride, if we had headed for CICO directly from the campground).

The rest of the afternoon was boring: six or seven hours of driving, resulting in our first case of "car butt" since we got Loraine (our van).  But we arrived at Castle Rock Park (in Juneau County - there is more than one) late in the afternoon, finding dozens of other teardrops sprinkled chaotically among the campsites in our designated corner of the park.

So the plan for this weekend is to enjoy some time out of the saddle and to meet some other teardrop owners (and to see if any of them have some interesting ideas that we can adopt for use with our camper).