Cyclists Rule: May 19, 2009

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Quincy to Nauvoo, IL

52.5 miles. Yet another beautiful day, and we had a good tail wind to boot. The first part of the ride today, 35 miles from Quincy to Warsaw, was through bottom land adjoining the Mississippi River. It looked almost completely deserted. As was the case for part of the ride yesterday (the parts between the insanely steep climbs up and near-vertical drops down the river bluffs on the Missouri side), the countryside along this stretch looks almost totally deserted. While we occasionally passed a farm, there was no indication that any crops had been planted and virtually no evidence that anyone was seriously trying to raise livestock. Admittedly, the ground is still saturated from all of the rain and the river is running very high at this time. It just gave a bit of a creepy feeling, like there was a nuclear war and they forgot to tell us. However we again saw bald eagles, which nest among the bluffs, along with herons, geese and another oriole.

The second part of our ride, after a lunch stop in Warsaw took us right next to the river on Hwy 96 from Hamilton to Nauvoo, one of the prettiest stretches of the entire trip. A combination of things (the water, all of the greenery, the river bluffs, reasonable hills, low traffic, etc.) made it a great finish to the day.
Nauvoo is a very interesting place, but I will write about tomorrow (a rest day). We are staying in a cabin here that is part of a group of cabins that have been carefully restored from the original logs to look the way they did during the pioneer days (with the addition of some modern conveniences like running water and soap). David, the owner and restored, has acquired the logs from the remains of cabins built in the 1800s from all over the country. In addition, he has been able to learn quite a bit about the history of each cabin - who built in it, lived in, etc., including photos of the original occupants. He started doing this as a hobby after work from his real job (auto body work), really got into it and quit the real job. The restored cabins are really nice and virtually bomb proof (some are constructed with logs that are nearly 2 feet in diameter, and all are chinked with a combination of wood and special cements and held together with enough bolts and nails to build a suspension bridge with. But the best part of being in one is learning something about the people who were born in it, lived in it and died in it. Most of them were probably thankful they had a roof over their heads after another back-breaking day. They would not dream of complaining about little things such as the heat/cold, the bugs, the dirt, etc. That is something we can learn from the pioneers - be thankful for what you have and stop griping about trivial things (e.g.,"there's nothing on TV").