32 Mile Bike Ride @ 98 Degrees!

Well - OK, it wasn't 98 degrees when I started the ride, but it was by the time I finished.

But let me back up a bit here.

I've been making the trip between Texas and the clan-home for 44 years now, and in that time I've marked up my map with a few spots for hiking, camping, and biking (And the general location of a fellow blogger's domicile!).

When heading back to Texas I often linger along the way (Maybe because the Wife doesn't always seem that enthused about me coming home?!), taking advantage of one or two of these spots or seeing if I can find new ones.

This year was no different.

Initially I had my eye on the Blackwell Horse Camp (you don't actually need a horse to stay there) between Bloomington and Bedford Indiana in the middle of the Charles C Deam Wilderness section of the Hoosier National Forest. Free, easy access, and a few nearby trailheads.

But other than the narrow corridor of the FS road, no engines, powered tools, or wheeled conveyances of any kind are allowed (even trail maintenance must be done on foot and by hand in all nationally designated wilderness areas) and the Lectric 3.0 on the rack was burning a hole in my pocket,

so, with apologies to a fellow blogger that I bypassed without so much as a long-distance wave, instead I headed further southwest of there to the Tunnel Hill State Trail, a rails-to-trails project in Illinois.

There are a number of places to jump on this 45 mile long trail. I chose the Viena city park about an hour south of where I spent the night before, because it has a large parking area with plenty of room for my diminutive, but larger than just a car, setup.

Where I'm standing used to be part of the tunnel too, but after a cave-in in the 1920's about 300 feet of the tunnel was opened to the sky (it's technically called daylighting, not an uncommon occurrence with old railroad tunnels) and a new portal constructed.

From there it's about 9 miles of peddling, generally uphill, to the trail's namesake tunnel. 

Just on the other side of the tunnel is the remnants of  the 'town' of Tunnel Hill created by the people that were digging the tunnel in the first place. There's also a parking area, water, pit-toilet, and picnic tables for those using the trail.

In the past this has generally been my turnaround spot since continuing on is to head downhill, which, for those of us without access to shuttle-rides, means an uphill slog to get back to this point before we can start the final 9 miles back to where the vehicle waits, but bolstered by the confidence of battery power this trip I continued on

towards the next access, and amenities, point at New Burnside

But before getting that far there's the offset remnants of a bridge over the trail where, back in the day, two railroads crossed each other at an oblique angle.

These were the days of rail-travel and here the town of Parker, with hotels, restaurants, and barbershops thrived on servicing those travelers.

But once the passenger cars quit running Parker completely disapeared back into the woods and is now known on maps as he Parker Site

By the way, the beaver dams that used to be between Tunnel Hill and the Parker Site are gone now,

but the scenery alongside the trail is still there.

 Next stop, Burnside, and

another trail-access point with amenities.

At this point I was pleased with how the ebike was working out on a long-ish ride and was tempted to  continue on another 4.5 miles to the next access point at Stonefort. But I didn't want to do something stupid (OK - even more stupid than being out here in this heat in the first place!), so forced myself to make this my turnaround spot.

But first, time for a bit of lunch to keep a growing boy going!

With that done, and nothing much else to do (you know - since I was being sensible - ohhh maaann, what a drag!) I headed on back to Viena.

By this point, around mid day, things were seriously heating up and I hadn't seen anyone else out on the trail in quite some time.

I guess I was the only idiot in the county that day. But I'm an idiot that lives in Texas and spends most every day year round outside and has learned how not to die in the heat - at least so far.

So, while the heat wasn't all that great, the ride was. First longish ride on the new ebike and I wasn’t disappointed.

I'll go into more detail on how the bike is working out in a future post.

But now that I didn't have the breeze of motion tempering the heat, it was HOT!

By the time I had the bike loaded back up on the rack it was still only mid-afternoon. I didn't  want to get too much further south before stopping for the night, and in this heat (it was 98 inside the trailer at that time and 104 when I crossed Arkansas the next day) I really didn't want to stop until sundown, which was a long ways away.

I knew of a State Forest Recreation site, Lake Glendale, about 15 miles east of where I was so my plan was to head on over there and kill the rest of the afternoon hanging around in shade of the day-use area.

I've stayed in the campground over there in the past, but it's a FCFS campground not that far from several medium-sized cities and this was a Friday, but just for grins, when I got there I thought I'd drive through the non-electric loops to see what was up before heading to one of the day-use areas to chill (metaphorically, not actually).

This recreation area is run by a vendor that gets a healthy percentage of the revenue. I was here close to Labor Day one year and not only were the designated campsites full, the vendor, with thier eye on profits, had campers scattered all over the place. In the day-use areas, the group site, out in the field next to the swimming beach, around the edges of parking areas, even in little clearings just barely off the roads. So I didn't expect much in the way of empty campsites on this summer Friday.

Well, as it turns out, I was wrong. In fact out of the 30 or more non-electric campsites not a single one was taken. 

So change of plans. Damn-fool idea or not, $10 with my geezer card got me a decent, though sweltering, campsite with nearby flush toilets and hot-ish showers tucked into the quiet of the trees.

Come morning, a Saturday, I was still the solitary idiot camping out there, but it wasn't getting any cooler so it was time to head on home where I could at least sleep in air-conditioned space..

That night's stop would be another rest area not too far into Texas, but I certainly didn't want to get there until the sun had been down for an hour or so, so I slow-played the drive. Taking the 'scenic' route down to the southern end of Illinois on State road 37 (I quoted scenic because by the time you get down close to Cairo there's not much scenic about it), then working my way across Arkansas on its smaller roads.

Yes, by pushing it I could have made it all the way home in one shot, but the Wife really doesn't like late-night visitors, even me. (Especially me?)