Day 3—Salamonie Lake, Huntington, Indiana to Horseshoe Lake, St. Louis, Illinois

Day 3 morning! The birds woke both Devin and I up, and Devin decided he needed his earplugs. And maybe I needed an eye-mask to wake up later. Either way, we got up with the birds and the sun and took our time packing, eating and leaving. We checked up out and the parks people were very interested that we were from Canada. We left via a very pretty highway that went straight (and I mean straight as in no turns) through farmer’s fields. The fields were pretty wet, so the sun was making the ground all misty and foggy.

Yesterday was the day that it started to get hot. We are definitely getting south, and by the afternoon, we had taken off many layers and it was up to 91̊ F (32̊ C). So by the time we got to Salamonie Lake we were extremely hot and jumped in the lake as soon as possible. So today, we were a bit more prepared, although we kept heading south so it just kept getting hotter! We wanted to find Wi-Fi to post our blog and a store to get our food, so drove around a small town (Anderson, Ind.) looking for both. All we found was McDonalds and Walgreens, so were not very successful.

We then headed out on the interstate towards Indianapolis. The highways are crazy! At one point, there were 7 lanes going one direction! We hadn’t made great time in the morning, but then seemed to make great time in the afternoon. We passed the state line and switched time zones. In Illinois, we hopped on a side highway and enjoyed our way down to St. Louis. We stopped just outside, in East St. Louis at the Horseshoe Lake State Park. It was beautiful, and we camped on an island in the middle of the oxbow lake. We got in a bit late, and made a fire, set up the tent and cracked a beer/hard ice tea. The bugs soon got to us, but it had cooled down a bit, so we put on long pants. Not nearly as bad as the Arctic, but bad all the same!

Kilometres today—544!

-Lauren