The night before, and that morning, I had found, and was scouring over, a map of Illinois that showed everything there was to be seen. The whole state was broken into sections and turned into a book showing old country roads, railway tracks used and abandoned, pipelines, and power lines. From this I gleaned all the knowledge I could of what the most direct way to Cape Girardeau was.
I had some coffee with Craig in the morning then Vicki invited me to come with them to church. At first I said no thanks thinking I wanted to walk some, I was filthy with no clean clothes, and just really not interested. Then Craig said they’d all be going out to lunch after and I was welcome to come to that too, so I rethought it. I still wanted to get walking, but then I know I get so driven to do something I forget why I was doing it and this seemed to be exactly why I was doing it, to meet folks, so I agreed to go.
Craig suited me up with a clean T-shirt and I put on the new pants I got throwing the old pair out. He also decided I had the most improper socks that’s available for hiking and gave me some new high tech socks to keep the sweat off my feet and cut down on the blistering. Done up in my duds I sallied forth back into Kentucky for a little bit of church going.
I had a good time. I even started thinking if I’m near a church, or whichever, every Sunday I should go regardless of the religion and meet the people there. First there was the church part for an hour, which was nice, but what I really liked was for another hour after that there was Sunday School where we go to discuss things rather than just sit and listen. It was a great little group for discussion and it was an interesting topic of doing good as a lifestyle and feeling good because of it. Something I’d been thinking a lot about lately.
After church we all went out for Chinese food at a buffet style place. It was all you can eat so I loaded up and pigged out. I had a good time talking with everyone there, then after it was all wrapped up, we went to see the lot where they’re building their house and watered a dying apple tree there.
We arrived back at the camper around 2. I gathered my things, wrote down my route from that snazzy map, and set off with a hearty goodbye. I believe it was five or six miles later that I ended up in Metropolis, home of Superman.
Wandering through town I looked for a place to sit and eat, mainly just to talk with people. I stopped in briefly at a Subway store and got some water from a kid there and chatted with him. From there I ran across a bunch of kids on scooters who followed me around a bit telling me to go to Hardee's which I wasn’t too enthusiastic about. Eventually I found myself in front of a fifteen to twenty foot high, in color, statue of Superman himself. A lady took my picture with him, then I took my picture with him, and from there, realizing there was no more else in town to see I left up Rt. 45.
The road was long out of town. Illinois flattens out quick with the occasional rolling hill that you don’t really notice all that much. I truly was in the mid-west now, and no longer in what had become my beloved South. I walked for a long while and eventually called Ingrid at home to see how she was doing.
Around seven I was off the highway and heading down one of my back roads. The woods were scattered here and there so I eventually just picked a spot that would shelter me a bit from being seen and set up camp. After reading a bit I bedded down for the night.