We arose before 5:00 am again and after breakfast (the team that Bruce and I are on had breakfast duty this morning) we hit the road by 6:30 am. Even though we are heading generally east, most of the morning was spent going south and west (into the wind of course!), so we could avoid Chicago and some other quite large towns and the associated traffic. As Bruce put it, the day was mostly corn, corn, more corn, soybeans, farm, corn, soybeans, corn, farm, corn and corn. My back was really sore from yesterday's rough roads, so I was miserable for the first 40 miles, but after a lunch break and some ibuprofen I felt better and actually rode stronger the last half of the day. The group really spread out with the lead riders between one and two hours ahead of the last riders. Bruce and I started out almost last but over the course of the day ended up in the first third of the group into camp.

We're camped in a private park, made up of 12,000 acres of reclaimed coal strip mine.  It's a beautiful facility and our dinner was a "whatever-you-want-to-eat" deal at the snack bar, not the most gourmet food but perfect for what we did today. The weather has really improved this evening, after being cloudy/foggy and threatening rain all day it's cleared off and is a beautiful night. We met a group of families from the area that are camped here, did a bit of carbo-loading (i.e. had a beer) with them, and just had a good conversation. Another fine Big Ride Moment.

It's off to bed again, since we have another century to do tomorrow (that will make over 400 miles in these last 4 days).