Last Day of the Ride - June23

Nothing too earth shaking for the last entry of the ride... I guess that's a good thing.

As planned we left southern Illinois this morning and headed for South Haven. After checking most of the weather reports it became pretty obvious that we were going to encounter some nasty weather on this last leg of the trip. As we reached the middle part of IL (and route 24 East) the temperature dropped at least 15 degrees, the sky took on a really odd appearance and the winds kicked up significantly. I was convinced, at the very least, we were going to get drenched and at the worst, sucked off the pavement in a funnel cloud (as interesting as the Emerald City might have been, the thought of such a trip was not at all appealing). After being splattered by a few large rain drops we stopped to don our rain gear. This evidently did the trick because for the remainder of the ride there was no rain at all. We traveled over wet roads and didn't pass a creek or stream that wasn't out of it's banks flooding everything from soccer fields to corn fields, but no rain.

Of course the significance of this is that the curse which has plagued Charlie and me for low these many rides seems to have been lifted. The truth is that the only day out of the entire trip that it rained, was day 1 and even that was nothing to be concerned with. The bottom line is that our future as "rain makers" has been shaken to the core and it is most unlikely that anyone would call on us in the future to relieve drought stricken areas with our presence.

After an uneventful ride across I-94 and 196 we arrived in South Haven about 3:45.

I may still summarize our wanderings over the next few days so if you are interested check in from time to time.