Day 1

Finally I got underway on my trip after a 4 day delay. My anticipation was high but a check of the weather in the morning showed that if I stuck to planned route, I was in for some really wet riding on my first day. Immediately to my south in Michigan and Indiana was a pretty large thunder storm and heading toward Chicago was an extremely large storm cell that was heading southwest. Between them there appeared to be an opening, that if I was lucky, I could head south into central Indiana and possibly avoid both storms. If I stuck to my plan and headed toward Chicago and Route 66 there would be no way to avoid the major storm that was headed in from the west. This storm was packing heavy rain, hail, flash flooding, and high winds. So instead of heading to Route 66 at Joliet, IL, I decided to turn south at Michigan City, IN and hopefully avoid the major storm. As I approached the Michigan state line, it started to rain and it progressively got harder as I got to Michigan City. In Michigan City I headed south on IN-421 which goes straight south to Lafayette, IN. The farther south I got the lighter the rain became; eventually turning into a light drizzle. After about 70 miles of rain, the sun began to peak through. At Crawfordsville, IN I headed west to Springfield, IL and then to south Carlinville, IL where I eventually got a room at the Carlinville Best Western at about 8:00 p.m. Michigan time. This was an 11 hour ride that covered about 540 miles all together. I am sure that I have missed a lot of great sights along Route 66 from Chicago to Carlinville, but with the rain I am not sure that I would have enjoy it much any. In any event I was able to see a whole lot of corn growing in Indiana and Illinois. Needless to say, with the rain and all the corn, I did not get to take any pictures. The weather report for tomorrow is 95 and sunny. Hopefully more conducive to sightseeing and picture taking.