The Idea: Recapitulate the original purpose of the Hennepin Canal - connecting the Illinois River to the Mississippi at the Quad Cities - by riding it from its eastern end in Bureau Junction to where it empties into the Rock River at the western end at Timbrook Field in East Moline, and continue on from there to the Mississippi River and across into Iowa. And then, of course, turn around and reverse the trip back to Bureau Junction.

6/25/2022 - Geneseo Campground to Lock 2 in Bureau Junction - 48 Miles

Rain.

I felt the first drops sometime around 4:30 AM. I was sleeping with the rain fly open, so the mesh top of the tent was open to the sky; and hence, to the rain. Fortunately, those first few drops were light - enough to wake me, but not to drench or wash me out. I unzipped the mesh and pulled the rain fly down, zipped it all back up, and went back to sleep.

The tent did it’s job - I was dry and comfortable until I woke up in earnest around 6:30 or so. This wasn’t due to an alarm, or issues with the weather, just my natural wake cycle.

But while I was awake - and still dry - the world outside my tent was decidedly not. Those light drops of rain had precipitated a storm system that was still diligently pounding down on my campsite, moving along a easterly track, essentially scouring ahead on the path I was planning to follow that day.

I had planned to be on the trail by about 8:30 or so, if not earlier, trying to apply the lessons I’d learned about departure time from day one. Instead I found myself laying there, watching the radar on my phone, looking for openings in the rainfall.

About an hour later - around 7:30 or so - it opened up enough to allow me to get out of the tent, take care of personal sundries, and get some breakfast - Peak Refuel Breakfast Skillet (very yummy!) - and coffee made. But only just. As I was getting that all put together the storm started to roll in again, so I gathered up my food and coffee and ducked back into the tent.

I love the idea of this tent:

It’s a lightweight, single-person tent clearly designed primarily to provide cover and protection for its occupant and a few personal items overnight on a trip very much like this one. And it works great at all of that - I was kept safe from the elements aside from one tiny drip (which I can address with some seam sealer). It was comfortable, and had room for the little battery fan MLW cleverly got for me, which effectively moved the air in the tent while everything was closed up. It performed as designed.

What it did not do - could not do, by design - was allow me to sit up. This hadn’t been a consideration for me, since the only thing I was planning to do in it was sleep. But I hadn’t considered this situation.

I ducked back into the tent probably around 8-8:15-ish. It continued to storm until about quarter after 10. And when I say storm here, I mean wind, rain, thunder and lightning (I’ll ride in rain, but I’m a-skeerd of lightning). So I spent about two hours alternating between being propped up on one arm and laying on my back. I ate my food, drank some coffee, and did some work; and spent much of that time trying to decide at what point the pain in my arm and shoulder was simply too much and I needed to lay back down.

I still love the idea of this tent, but for the next trip I think I might need to do a search for a lightweight tent that is more upright. Or, alternately, see if there is some sort of lightweight tarp system I could bring along to allow me to get out of the tent in the rain. It would have been nice to have that in any case, since the trike - with my cargo bags - was out in the weather the entire time. But I’m pretty sure anything with open sides would have left me damp during the storm.

As the rain cleared I got out and started to get things ready. Although the trike and bags were out in the rain, pretty much anything that I was worried about keeping dry was either in waterproof bags, or in the tent with me. So mostly it was now a matter of emptying the bags out to get the water out of them, and then repacking them and taking down camp. I was ready to hit the trail just after 10:30:

This was, of course, two hours later than I’d planned. But then, they say that men planning is what makes God laugh, so at least I’d contributed to someone’s entertainment for the day.

While I wasn’t able to apply all my lessons from day one and get on to the trail as early as I wanted, I did have the two additional bottles of water along for the ride so I wouldn't run out on the way back.

And I knew the ride back was going to be slower than the ride up because the unpaved portions of the trail - the portions like this…

…would be softer - and soft is slow. But while I’d mentally accounted for the surfaces, the storm rolling along the trail ahead of me provided other obstacles. One was fairly predictable:

Fortunately, while the water was over the path, it wasn’t very deep. Most importantly, it was below the level of the seat, which meant I wasn’t dragging my backside through it. Several years ago, riding the Feeder Canal, I discovered that it was possible to hold yourself up above the seat by pressing your back against it and lifting up at the handles (though you don’t want to have to do this for very long), but that wasn’t necessary here.

The others I hadn’t expected, though I probably should have:

This is not the kind of windfall I was hoping for…

There were three of these along the way. This one was the first that I encountered, and in this case I dismounted and cleared it out of the way:

The second one I did not get a picture of, but it was branches laying across the trail around my standing chest height. There was no way to get to them that allowed me to move them out of the way, but the trike is much lower than my standing height, so I was able to pick my way under those with the trike. And the last one showed up towards the end of the ride:

Maybe, if I hadn’t been riding for hours, I would have had the gusto to pick it up and move it, but I doubt it. A brief attempt found that it was resolute in its intention to lay across the trail, and I suspect it will take a person who is equipped with a chainsaw to get it gone. So here I just shook my head and carried the trike over it.

But having the storm proceed me along the trail wasn’t all bad. The rain knocked down the tall grass on the early portions of the trail…

…so I was able to proceed along this time without becoming a grass seed collector, like I had on day one. Not as good for my future artisanal grass seed business, but it kept me from having to pick seeds out of… well… everywhere.

One might think that day three is simply a reversal of day one, and to some degree I suppose that’s true. And given that riding along the canal puts you out in nature, albeit man-made nature, all day, which means you spend a lot of time with views like this…

So the frogs don’t really sit on top of the lily pads that much - Kermit and cartoons lied to me…

…and encountering fellows like this…

…it’s hard to think of that as being a bad a thing.

But coming at things from the other direction does mean that you are seeing things from the other side. And so when I came across this, I realized I hadn’t seen it on the way up:

As you can see from the water mark on the concrete, the water is coming up under pressure in bursts. I have no idea why - I don’t know if this is a feed from a tiling system, or where the additional water would be coming from. But it was oddly soothing to see and listen to, a little like waves crashing on the shore, I suppose. I ended up sitting there and watching it for a little while before I moved on.

And it would have been behind me on day one, as well as being more towards the later part of that ride, where I was trying to get to camp, so I didn’t notice it at all. And, because of that dynamic, I was now able to spend some time on things that I did notice, but had to simply ride past because I needed to be somewhere. Most notably, this lift bridge.

Unlike most of the locks, the gates and hardware are still present at this site:

The other thing that is different going from west to east is that the trail mileage markers are counting down. Since it was the last day, and I was on my way back, it gave a real feel for where I was at on the ride, and how much progress I was making. And as I got into the last hour or so, I was in much more familiar territory; I was on the parts of the trail I’d ridden several times before. So a lot of it was simply enjoying the nature and counting things down on the markers as I pedaled along.

But while I was enjoying my ride, I was still glad to see the end when it arrived:

As I’d expected, it was slow - both in terms of riding speed, which came out to an an average of 8.15mph for this portion of the trip - and in terms of total time. I arrived at the end of the trail at a little after six in the evening. All told, between the soft surfaces and obstacles, the ride back took me over 7 1/2 hours to complete.

Of course, that’s 7 1/2 hours of nearly complete solitude, in nature, so taking a little more time is hardly a bad thing.