Fennimore, WI to Madison, WI

We were awakened at 4:00 a.m. by rain coming down on the tent. I could not get back to sleep and the rain started coming down harder. I decided to get up and start packing for the day. This of course required getting Julie up also. I was a good thing that we started when we did, for by the time we had things packed away, the floor of the tent was starting to collect water. The camp we were at had a rain shelter with picnic tables, so we were ok for eating breakfast.

By the time we finished breakfast, it was only sprinkling and I took off my rain gear before starting to ride for the day. The ride was just over 70 miles for the day. It was refreshingly cool and overcast for the morning. The sun broke through later in the day, but it was still comfortable. The terrain was rolling hills of green crops. We passed by the Cave of the Mounds which I remember visiting as a kid with relatives from Michigan. I remember that we did the visit on a day when it was in the 90s and when we came out of the cave after a couple hours, which was in the 50s for temp, we all felt sick from the drastic temp change.

We past through the edge of Barneveld, a town that I remember was almost totally destroyed by a tornado years ago. We had a travel a state hard pack bike trail for about 6 miles, as the road was to busy for us to travel. There was one spot where the hard pack had sand on it and I almost lost control of the bike. We biked through the town of Mt. Horeb and I stopped for a quick cup of coffee and cherry square treat. We approached the Madison area from the southwest, a direction I was not familiar with and did not know where we were in relation to the downtown capitol square. We ended up on the outskirts on the southeast side at Crossroads Church. We are camped in a play field behind the school next door. The bikers all wore their matching C2C biking jerseys today and we were staged at a park about a mile from the church, to all ride in together as a total group. That was pretty impressive. There were a couple media photographers there, but no TV video coverage, which was disappointing, as they were notified we were coming.

All lot of people were on hand to welcome us to the church and there was a band playing. We were given a greeting by the mayor of Madison and church celebration team. The Madison folks have done a great job of welcoming us and are very organized and have planned very well. They are feeding the group for dinner tonight and lunch on Sunday, with various outings planned for Sunday afternoon and a music concert and prayer time late afternoon and evening. My brothers Jim and Larry and sister-in-laws, Ruth and Sue and my mother, and niece Kerri and husband Michael and family were also here for the festivities and see us. We all went out to eat for Saturday night dinner and had a great time. It was so good to see familiar faces! Also, our friends from Milwaukee, Jerry and Carol Veenhuis are coming on Sunday for the service and lunch.

Sundays are a welcome time of celebration, worship, and resting. Tomorrow we have toward Chicago, with a stop at Trinity College on Tuesday night. We will hook up with Trav and Megs, our son and daughter-in-law who live in the N.W. Chicago suburbs, Monday night at Megs parents’, Jack and Sue, home in Mc Henry.

Love to all, P & J.