Day 2: West Dam Campground (near Carlyle, IL) to Stephen A. Forbes State Park Campground (near Omega, IL)

June 17, 2012

(By Joy)

Well, after a day in the heat, I was a pooped little puppy and was ready for a decent night of sleep. We had nice quiet neighbors on one side (a plus), but as we got ready for bed, I was worried about the empty site beside us since the campground was otherwise full, meaning that we were likely to get some noisy, underprepared campers trying to set up at night, and, of course, our new neighbors arrived right before dark and proceeded to let their kids run around and shine flashlights all over the place and holler while dad set up the palatial 3-room tent, complete with a not-so-portable air conditioner vented to the outside and mom kept yelling, 'Where's the chicken?' and other questions of importance at 9:00 at night. As we were lying in our tent-hot, sticky, tired, and trying to sleep, we were relieved when she finally found the chicken around 9:30.

Normally, none of that would have been too outside the ordinary for a summer weekend at a lakeside campground, but we also had the distinct misfortune of being parked just behind an RV with a family who decided that their giant amenity-filled RV and extra truck full of stuff wasn't enough for their foray into the 'wilds' of the campground. They also brought a DVD player and film projector, attached a movie screen to the side of the RV, and proceeded to treat all of us to a special showing of Footloose, long after many of us wanted to go to bed. There were no staff at the campground after dark, and a call to the rangers to enforce the quiet hours went unheeded, so I would try to doze off between car chase scenes and too-loud musical interludes. The family had apparently invited others to join them as there were close to 20 people watching. As the move finally ended, they decided to clap for the film, as if Kevin Bacon himself were there to receive the honor and as if they needed to tell the rest of the campground that the auditory torment was over.

I thought we might finally get some sleep when the wind changed directions abruptly and lightning started flashing. We'd left the fly off the tent in the futile hope that a breeze would cool us down in the night, so Jeff and I unstuck ourselves from our sleeping pads, wrested the rain fly on after some amount of muttering (ok...swearing) at it and my inability to get it on straight. With the wind, Jeff got worried about branches falling on us, but I finally just went to sleep. Even then, my sleep was much interrupted by coughing fits I kept having from a lingering cold I'm fighting off. It was almost a relief when the alarm went off this morning because I knew I could stop trying (mostly in vain) to sleep.

We were up early in a futile attempt to beat the heat and contemplated all sorts of nasty things we could do to our rude neighbors in payback for their late-night showing, but we just packed up and made our way to a nearby McDonald's for breakfast, where Jeff gave me his hash brown and made my day since I love me some McDonald's hashbrowns.

Carlyle has been improving their bicycle infrastructure, and we were on bike paths across the reservoir's dam and along some of the nearby levees. They were a bit rough in a few places but pleasant as they kept us away from traffic. So far, so good on our route. Then we turned on Grasher Road, which was pleasant but the grass along the sides kept getting higher and encroaching into the road, and soon we were pretty much riding in a field. My high bottom bracket kept my feet and legs out of the weeds, which was handy. As we emerged from the road, a nice local lady stopped to talk to us about our trip and warn us from another nearby field road.

Roads later in the day deteriorated, and rough, gravelly surfaces and the heat conspired to lead Jeff to take a brief nap outside Hoots Chapel before we headed into Salem for a Nutella-based picnic in a nice city park. I also had some BLT-flavored chips (definitely not recommended), and we stopped in a nearby garden to see a statue of William Jennings Bryan, who had been born in Salem.

I suffered through the heat leaving our lunch stop and didn't think we'd see any services before arriving at our state park campground, but the tiny town of Omega gave us a surprise in the form of a great little country store. We refueled with ice cream and cold drinks, looking at the wide variety of things for sale there-everything from laundry detergent to liquor-and eventually made our way to our campsite, which was much quieter than the previous night. We were too tired/lazy to backtrack to the state park's restaurant, so I made some freeze-dried camping meals. Jeff wasn't sure about the wisdom of eating spicy Chicken Vindaloo in camp, but it seems to have turned out ok.

Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 84 miles (135 km)

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