HavengaBikeRide

This morning we had a beautiful morning view of the river and the bridges out our hotel window. Once we got started, we had a beautiful tailwind and flat roads to Warsaw, IL.  The first stretch was on the appropriately-named Bottom Road as it went along the bottom of the bluff which was on the right, with bottomlands on the left. Even after leaving Bottom Road, the roads usually were right at the base of the bluff with the farm fields stretching away to our left.  When we got to Warsaw we turned up a hill and continued onto the main street where we found Jennifer's diner and stopped for lunch. Jim had the meat loaf special and Kay a Monte Cristo sandwich.  We asked about a large multistory abandoned brick building we had seen on the outskirts of town, and Jennifer informed us it had been a shoe factory and then a battery factory, which ended up contaminating the site with radiation.  At Hamilton we recognized a stretch of the road from a fall 2020 bike trip we took o...

  We had a very pleasant breakfast in an ornate room at the Kingsley Inn.  We had fun watching trains out our window and even got to see the swing section of the bridge being turned to let a large raft of barges go through, pushed by their tugboat.. The bridge across the river is owned by the railroad, and is a double-decker toll bridge, with double train tracks on the lower level and a 2--lane road on the upper level.  We were pleased that we were going to cross it on the train.    The Southwest Chief train was late getting into Fort Madison, then just as they were about to close the doors, we had to wait a few more minutes to leave as the bridge had opened to let maritime traffic through.  But we had plenty of time in Chicago, enough time to take a bike ride there but it was raining.  Got to Holland about 30 minutes late but it was raining just before this, but it wasn't raining while we pedaled home, tire...