Day 5 - Valmeyer, IL to Gorham, IL

After spending the night in a nice Super 8 motel in Waterloo, IL, we drove by van to Valmeyer, IL, which was the planned end point for day 4.  It was a gloomy, dark day.  A light rain caused us to don our rain jackets, but the sweat we began to generate inside our jackets was a greater nuisance than

the discomfort of the cool air and the drizzle.   Soon we packed them up as the rain never really got serious.  This was a day for riding great roads along the base of the Mississippi River bluff, for many miles.

Readily available stones and timber were clearly used to build the farms.  Solid old farmsteads still stand.

We passed through sleepy old towns like Prairie du Rocher with lots of levees for protection.

The bluffs are the sites of former and current quarries.  It would be fun to explore some of these huge tunnels.

We stopped for a break near one of these quarries and here are the guys attacking the goody bin.

The bluffs have been used as shelter for thousands of years.  This site near Modoc was used as early as 8000 BC.

A little northwest of Chester, IL we found ourselves very close to Big Muddy again, but often there was timber obscuring our view.

South of Chester, we jumped on an 8 mile stretch of IL 3 with no shoulder and lots and lots of coal semis very intent on getting to a barge loading station.  Along with the spitting rain, it was interesting.  Those semis make a lot of mist with a little rain.

From there we rode on top of levees near the river in a very quiet bottomland with spitting rain and seemingly dropping temperatures.  We ended our 67 mile ride at the Bottoms Up bar and grill with a mixture of beer and coffee and hamburgers, etc., in the nearly deserted town of Neunert, which is near our departure point for Day 6, Gorham, IL.  Besides all the card players an interesting feature was a shotgun with a barrel about five feet long mounted over the bar.  After lunch we piled into the van and left for our Quality Inn in Carbondale.