Today, Day 25, Addie begins writing the blogs, because Holly made it safely onto a Greyhound to begin a faster ride home. We had an early start (up at 3 a.m) to get to the 4:50 departure half an hour early as instructed, but ended up going back to the hotel and waiting a bit over an hour and heading back because the bus had been delayed. Well, she is safely on her way now!
We made a few inefficient turns getting from the hotel back to the route, and missed another turn by roughly 1/2 a mile but overall made it along the route pretty well. I had about 30.1 miles on my odometer after we got to our campsite and it probably should have been about 25 if we hadn’t gotten creative… Ryan says we are about 950 total accumulated trail miles as of today.
The route was off and on Route 76 today but I think I never saw any 76 signs and only a few faded Bicycle Route signs mostly in Goreville, which weren’t super helpful. The route did take us through a sliver of Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. There were a lot of scenic tree shaded small road views and a nice open vista over a lake (Little Grassy Lake?). We are still getting the hang of how to trigger a selfie picture by holding up a high 5 hand just right but usually get the picture taken eventually.

Ryan is getting set up in the tent. There are enough insects that we picked up a few citronella candles when we were getting dinner, and they seemed to help. Fern Clyffe State Park in Goreville, Illinois, has very nice camp sites in the first come first served section, and I presume the rest of the park is just as nice but we didn’t look around much. Time for nomming dinner, getting ready for bed, blog, and getting lights for the bikes set to recharge then get to sleep to recharge ourselves, too.

We actually met a gentleman in the campground who has been trike-ing for a good portion of his life, and biked a lot before that. It was interesting to talk with someone who has trike recumbent knowledge and experience who isn’t actually on the trail. Also, thanks to the couple people who gave us confirmation or direction on where to head back on track!