I decided to take a rest day today.  Well the decision was somewhat made for me, I had nowhere to go tomorrow, everything looked booked up. Even if camping was an option it’s far too hot and humid for me.  I won’t sleep and will just be miserable.

I was glad to see there’s a restaurant next door to my motel that’s open for breakfast early at 6:00am, not that I need early today but I can eat a good breakfast before leaving tomorrow.  So many of the places further west don’t open until 7:00 or 8:00, too late when on a bike tour.

After a great breakfast I started route planning. I looked into possibilities of heading east towards Madison then either through or around Chicago.  From where I am now I could go over half the way to Milwaukee on rail trail.  But then what? Some people take the ferry across Lake Michigan and continue on to either north or south shore of Lake Erie. The Canadian border is set to open about a week too late for me.  This route is very compelling but I don’t want to take a ferry.  I’ve peddled too far to have a gap in my cross country ride.

Another possibility is to ride directly into Chicago from Madison. From what I understand Chicago does have a good trail network and if it’s anything like Minneapolis the ride won’t be nearly as bad as it may sound.  I do see ways of avoiding Chicago by staying on roads but at this point I would have to do too much research regarding places to stay.

After a lot of searching I decided to stick with the Northern Tier.  I’ve ridden it this far (minus my ride through Minneapolis) so I might was well continue. I do think there are better ways of getting through this area of the country but I just don’t have the time for that much planning.  I decided to book out the next 8 days getting me through next weekend. Even on route there are limited places to stay and in some place motels were already booked. I’m booking all motels, no camping because it’s just too humid and the weather seems too unpredictable.

Of the 8 days, 4 are over 90 miles which I’m not crazy about. After about 80 miles I really want off the bike but I’ve done 88 so I can definitely do 5-10 more.  I thought by now I would have the occasional century ride but it hasn’t yet happened.  While I think I can ride the miles I also think I’m just asking to end up injured or at the very least just simply not happy. 

Tomorrows ride is about 70 miles but with some hills followed by my longest ride the next day at 98 miles.  The weather forecast is for favorable winds over the next week, only took 5 weeks. I’ll see how it goes the first few days and may change direction if necessary.

I also had time to figure out how to combine my GPS files to display in Google Maps, had to write some Python code. I updated yesterdays post with the combined map but zoomed in on the last couple days ride.  You can use the +/- buttons to zoom in/out and use your mouse to scroll the map around. I’ll update the earlier maps eventually and all future maps will be like this.