Mississippi River

The RV just pulled into TS # 35 at 9:25 local time. We can see the Clark Bidge over the Mississippi River into Illinios.

Jeff riding over the Mississippi River into Alton, IL

So I (Tim) was on the overnight van crew last night with Gail and Jeff was really moving. We did the entire 75 miles from TS 33 to TS 34 in the dark. It was an interesting ride. The road was completely flat for 55 of the 75 miles but had two 10 mile sections of 13% up for a mile and 13% down for a mile. Jeff was hammering up and flying down these crazy roads with lots of sharp curves. I was driving so I had to break out my race car driver skills in order to keep him in my headlights. We were both having fun.

When we got to TS # 34 it was 2 AM and Jeff was wide awake and feeling good. 2 cups of coffee and some pizza later he could not keep his eyes open. Gail and I made him get moving because we thought that the coffee would kick in but it didn't. We made it 8.9 miles out of TS # 34 in over an hour and Jeff was asleep for most of it. I kept having to yell at him to get on our side of the double yellow line. He kept saying he just wanted to see what it was like over there. Kind of funny now but Gail and I were pretty stressed out for that hour. Finally we stopped and put Jeff in the van. He kept asking what was wrong and if he crashed, then 2 seconds later he'd be snoring. We had called the RV up from TS # 34 and they caught us in about 10 minutes so we got Jeff showered and into his "real" bed. I was asleep when he started this morning at 6 AM so Heather will need to do an update on that.