Around 7:30 am I heard some activity outside my room so decided to get up before Rick and Candy left for work. They had both been such charming hosts that I didn't want to miss saying good bye and thanking them for their generous hospitality. It turned out that Candy was already gone and Rick had decided to go in mid morning so we could have a nice breakfast together before I was on my way. Here he is in the kitchen cooking up an omelet, toast, sausage, coffee and juice. What a guy!!
Because it was such a beautiful morning we indulged ourselves and ate out on the deck.
Rick and Candy have ten acres of hardwood forest so their home is surrounded by huge trees that must be amazing in the fall when all the leaves are changing.
Rick had checked the weather radar for the area west of him and saw this huge line of sever thunder storms approaching directly in my path. It's nearly impossible to spend a month on the road and never get rained on so I decided to leave his comfy home and go for it. Here's a shot I took just before leaving.
It was another very warm day that hovered around 30'C (90'F) so I figured a little rain might cool things down at long last. The roads around the bottom of Lake Michigan were all under construction for miles as they struggled to resurface the aging interstate. This made it pretty slow going especially because this is a major trucking route through the midwest and there was literally a seemingly endless line of these giant eighteen wheelers to contend with all day.
This is where my adventure began. As I pushed westward I noticed this enormous black storm front coming closer with every mile and I knew that I was about to get very wet. I stopped for this next shot as the first rain drops hit my face shield.
This photograph fails to capture the moment but the rain came on so strong and so aggressively that I could never have taken another one without a waterproof camera. Within the next ten minutes the sky turned as dark as the night sky even though it was only 4:00 pm. The wind was bending the trees along the roadside and leaves where flying everywhere as the wind tore them from the tortured branches. I later heard from the people at the campground that the tornado sirens had sounded indicating winds had reached in excess of 60 mph.
All I was wearing was a pair of jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt so in a matter of minutes I was soaked to the bone and could feel the water which had soaked through my riding pants running down the inside of my pants and filling my boots. Trucks were stopping in the middle of the interstate because they couldn't see. I was so wet it seemed pointless to even bother putting on my rain suit so I kept riding sandwiched in between these huge semi's that were just crawling along. I finally pulled off because now I was freezing to death and put on my rain jacket just to get warm. It was a scene out of some crazy movie. I'm standing there on the side of the highway, holding onto my bike so it didn't blow over and then I look at my feet and I'm standing in three inches of water that was rushing by like a river. While all of this is going on there are these huge lightning bolts zapping the fields all around me. It will go down as the worst storm that I have ever been caught in on my bike. It was simply insane.
I hung in there for another hour and as I pushed west the storm slowly drifted past and the sky began to brighten and I just was glad to have survived the ordeal. My destination was Rock Island, Illinois where I found a very nice KOA campground waiting there for me. When I was checking in I was so cold that I could hardly sign my name because I was shaking so badly. The kind lady at the desk offered to escort me to their special new "Motorcycle Shelter" which was a sight for sore eyes.
The motorcycle parking space was covered and had a nice new table, chair, light and power outlet. Notice all my wet clothes hung on the bike to dry. I put my jeans over the red chair to the right and noticed a stream of water dripping on the concrete. That should help you understand just how soaked I was. I asked the desk lady about tomorrow's forecast and she said they had more storms coming. If this keeps up I'm going to either find a laundromat or run out of dry clothes to wear.
I passed in the Central time zone today so I'm another hour earlier but it's very late. Good night all.
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