I did not sleep well last night. It was very hot and we did not have good airflow in VanGo. It only has 2 tiny screened windows and even with the addition of a fan that Rochelle picked up, it was still tough to sleep. When I got up, I had only 5 hours sleep. Not great when you are in the middle of a cold. The cold has become a chest cold. That means a lot of coughing for me. Anyone who has heard my coughing will know that I'm likely annoying half the campground.
Once I left New Lisbon, I was immediately in hot, lonely farmland with no cell service. We had decided to meet at a town about half way as the whole day was a bit hard to check on the iPad, the only tool that we had at hand last night because New Lisbon is a bad area Verizon. We figured that in this half way town that we could get our Verizon connection again and we could use the computers to plan out the rest of the day.
As I rode to our mid-day destination, I started to see lots of campgrounds, each new one a little nicer and more kid friendly than the last. One had a really nice spray area for kids. I would have gone though it myself it hadn't been fenced off.
Then I came over a hill and saw water parks, rollercoasters and all manner of tourist traps. This was Wisconsin Dells, obviously a major tourist attraction in the area. We were expecting to see another sleepy town and hoping to find an air-conditioned place that we could find some lunch and figure out the rest of our day in comfort. Instead we found a busy town overrun by tourist in beachwear but we did find a place for lunch.
After lunch we went to a grocery story and picked up a 20 pound bag of ice. About 4 pounds of that went directly into the water bladder that I carry on my back. By carefully adding ice, water and more ice, I maximized the amount of cold in it. I now had wonderfully cold ice water on tap for the rest of my ride!
We made a plan to meet another 45 km down the road to make sure that I had enough water/ice for the following 20 km to get us to tonight's campground. About half way though this afternoon's riding, I got an email message from Rochelle saying that she was at Walmart but after coming out, VanGo would not start. I continued riding, assuming the the time consuming but once successful "tapping on the solenoid" procedure would fix it. Well that didn't work so Rochelle was going back into Walmart to pick up some more stuff to try some different things. By that time, I had passed where Rochelle was by about 15 km so I turned around and headed to the Walmart.
We had some missed messages due to bad cell coverage and by the time I got to the Walmart she was gone! She had managed to fix it herself and had done some pretty impressive sleuthing and and eventually got it going. Unfortunately I did not get the message that she was leaving to catch me, and she did not know that I was almost back to the Walmart. By this point it was 6pm and I had covered 110 km, the expected distance to our campground so, I just put the bike on the back of VanGo and we drove the the campground. We arrive just in time to have a dip in the pool before they shut it down for the evening.
The good thing was that although I ran out of water, it was because not all of the ice had melted over the 4 hours in the hot sun and temperatures that hovered around 38C (100F). I think having that really cold water kept me much cooler over the afternoon. I will be doing more of this as this heat wave is not expected to abate until the end of the week.
To help with the heat tonight, Rochelle bought a bunch of fine mesh material and we made rough covers for the front door windows so that we could level them open but still keep the bugs out. The bugs today seem to be less mosquitoes and more little beetle like creatures.
Tomorrow's route is currently planned to reach Harvard, IL, 134 km away. With another really hot and humid day and some good headwinds, that might be a bit optimistic. I think that we will have to find somewhere to camp a bit short of that.