Springfield to Normal, IL 05-14-2026 Day 34

It was a cool sunny morning and the wind was not supposed to be our enemy today. There was a breeze from the south or southeast and the land was pretty flat. When I’d laid out our route months ago, I had an endpoint in Springfield a few miles from where we started today. We had to wing it and make a new way to get back on course this morning. We made our way through some residential streets to find the link to old Route 66 and where the original course would take us north.

We made our way out of town through the suburb of Sherman. It was there we picked up a dedicated paved bike trail. We rode it for 6 miles to Williamsville. It was great to be away from any traffic, on smooth pavement, with easy peddling.

Historic Route 66 was now a frontage road to I-55. We were on it to Elkhart. It had some nice murals just over the railroad tracks.

Hopping back on to the frontage road, we could see sections of the original concrete from the older version of Route 66 between us and the railroad tracks to our right (east). We didn’t stop at the few blocks that made up Broadwell, 4 miles up the road. Lincoln was another 10 miles further. Being a town of 15,000, we had a few more things to see. The most important was a stop at Culver’s, but we caught a few other sights as well.

Outside of Lincoln, as we continued northeast, we passed a large solar farm. It was still growing, but took up a quarter mile of the road.

Before we got to Atlanta, 13 miles away, I couldn’t resist a selfie using some one else’s artwork. ILL-INI

Atlanta exceeded my expectations. There were several good photo opportunities, but the best for me was all the Giant Muffler Men.

It was a good day of riding. The wind had shifted more from the east, but it didn’t slow us down much. We made our way further north to McClean, IL. Not to be confused with the McClean, TX. This McClean was even smaller, but had more life to it. It made us think we were done with our ride because we had been riding a bike path.

We actually had a great bike trail from McClean all the way to the edge of Bloomington. This seemed to be a relatively new section that Frank from Chicago had told us of yesterday. We took a break along a covered picnic table after 12 miles. Then we continued on thinking we had less than 12 miles to go. We seemed to stop for a beer whenever we got to this range of our hotel. We thought we found a good place called Lil Beaver Brewery. It seemed like it was very close to our route and on the way to our hotel – a perfect choice. When we were within 2 miles of the place, we debated the easiest route as traffic was picking up and the shoulders were narrow. We thought we had a nice path to get past some railroad tracks and still drop us near the brewery. We got on Business I-55 thinking we would cross our desired Bunn Street only to overshoot it because this road did not intersect Bunn, it went over it as an overpass. Multiple times we thought we found a short path, but in the end we probably added a mile to get a beer. But it was worth it. The stout I had was great.

We relaxed with the beer. We had made good time, thanks to a weak wind opponent. We were remarkably better with our final directions to our hotel, although I over shot it a little because I couldn’t see the sign from the road. We both had an Italian beef sandwich for dinner. I had a Goose Island beer. We were preparing our pallettes for more Chicago flavors.

We long ago came to the conclusion that the difficulty of a ride is not measured in feet of elevation climbed, but which way the wind is blowing. The wind gods favored us today and it was a very pleasant experience. I got to see a lot of giant muffle men, eat some good food, and enjoy lots of smooth miles. A very good day.

The ride stats are here. The 3D video is here.

The Not So Lone Rider