I got up well before sunrise, checked the radar and found a series of storms that were just about to pass through. So I gathered up everything and actually got going a little before sunrise, something I haven't done in a long time. It looked like there would be a lull in the rain for awhile and I decided to take advantage of it. As there was no trail to follow anymore I had to wind my way through some narrow roads to get out of the urban commuter zone. It rained hard for a few minutes but soon faded to light rain and then stopped. The temperature was in the upper sixties, so it felt like summertime rain. Thankfully I was going in the right direction, south and east and so didn't have much traffic to deal with. Once I got past Hebron I was back in the country again and there wasn't really any traffic at all. The rain held off and the wind wasn't too bad and had shifted to southwest so I only had to fight it going due south. All the roads the first half were paved through flat farmland with mostly corn. There wasn't much of interest until I got to Dunn's Bridge, over the Kankakee river. The bridge was constructed in 1904 by a farmer. It was built sometime between the mid to late 1890s with steel beams salvaged from the 1893 Chicago world's fair. Or it was built in 1904 using parts from the first ferris wheel which premiered at the 1893 world's fair and was demolished after the 1904 world's fair. No one knows for sure. The county bought the bridge and land around it and restored it in 1994 and it's now on the National Register of Historic Places. In North Judson I stopped to get a midmorning lunch at a cute little Burger King inside a gas station, and jumped back on a rail trail again. It was nice to be off the road once more. It rained lightly off and on here and after less than 10 miles it ended and I diverted through some state lands on mostly gravel roads. There were enough gravel parking lots for hunters in the woods for hundreds of vehicles it seemed. But of course nobody was out there on this rainy weekday. As I rolled into Winamac the clouds off to my right darkened considerably and I rode to a nice park on a bend in the Tippecanoe river where I sheltered under a covered area out of the heavy rain. It didn't last long though and I crossed the river again on a nice suspension bridge, rode through town and checked into yet another small town hotel.