If you are of a certain age, you should recognize the characters in the picture above. Our travels today took us to the “birthplace” of the spinach loving sailor – Popeye. He was created in Chester Illinois along with all the other characters that appeared in the Popeye cartoons over the years. I had never been to Chester until today. The town (population about 8700 counting the prison inmates housed there) is decorated with murals, statues, and a nice little park all dedicated to the “strong to the finish” hero. The curator of the Popeye Museum (Debbie) has been collecting Popeye merchandise for a lot of years and will spend as much time as you have telling you all about each piece. She was a joy to talk to.

Debbie doesn’t like to have her picture taken but I managed to sneak this one in on her.

Getting to Chester was a built for motorcycles – The Great River Road. The road is slightly curvy with some rolling hills thrown in. The pavement is smooth and the weather was magnificent today. According to Debbie, the locals call this the No River Road because you never get to see the river until you are on the bridge that spans the waterway. I did take some video of the ride into town. Maybe I can figure out a way to add it to this blog at some point.

We had planned a day of about 280 miles and hadn’t covered many miles yet. We abandoned Chester and Popeye heading for Osceola, Arkansas

For the 3rd day in a row, the winds were tough to deal with. I ended up with my neck being sore from trying to hold my helmet up against it.

We rejoined the Great River Road but needed to make up some time. We changed the route and hit the dreaded interstate highway (I-55) heading south. The total route today was but seemed a lot longer because of the wind and a lot of big truck traffic. We did witness a big rig blow out a left front tire while he was running somewhere around 70 MPH. Fortunately for us, he was running on the opposite side of the divided highway. It still made me cringe a little.

These long riding days are hard to describe as interesting. This day is no different. We settled for dinner at a Mexican restaurant which happened to be next door to our motel. The food was ok and they had cold liquid refreshment to go with it.