Now, Okoboji looks like a great place to spend a week, but after the hot ride, (Sue best have lots of water ready in Boyden) a dip in the lake or a shower will be what's planned.
Our campsite, we hear, may still remain under water.
Yet I am confident that Iowans are a resilient and tenacious lot. Moreover, as quoted in the Music Man Iowans "...will give you their shirts, and the back to go with them..." if adversity strikes. Other towns have already come to help with cleaning up flooded homes and low-lying venue sites.
Even less than two weeks after the floods Keloland News reported, on June 25th, that Rock Valley Will Still Host RAGBRAI. Rock Valley's mayor, Kevin Van Otterloo, said in a press release that "It’s hard to let go of something that we have worked for months to organize," and that the town looks forward to "...having the opportunity to showcase the community that we have seen rally together over the last week."
What and where and how large is Rock Valley? It is a city in Sioux County, Iowa, United States, along the Rock River. The population was 3,354 at the 2010 census.
That said, once again, we too are giving Iowa a Try.
Our three-day journey east via Dodge Ram diesel prairie schooner, aka Big Red, was smooth and unmarred by automotive calamity.
After two truck stop nights, one in Illinois and one in Ohio, we were looking forward to the first actual bed in eight days. It was provided by an old chum from my days as a teacher in Bloomfield some 43 years ago. Fellow teacher Peggy Newberry Toluba’s life has taken her to Lewisburg, PA, home of Bucknell University and nearby home of the bed & breakfast which Peggy and her husband Tony run. Peggy reached out to me last year to renew our acquaintance. When she said, “If you are ever passing through central Pennsylvania…..,” well who could forget a proposal like that. And here is where we stayed.
One diversion when crossing Pennsylvania: collecting unusual place names. Here’s this year’s list: Gipsy, Turkey City, Barkeyville, Whiskerville, Pecan, Leeper, Boot Jack, Export, Drifting, and Jesrsey Shore.
We of course are much the same, but as we now pick up the threads of life here in East Haddam, we are at the very least reminded that we might be getting older, but we are still strong and competent enough to take on a 3000 mile road trip and a 410 miles-of-cycling RAGBRAI adventure!
We have come to rest for the first night of the eastward trek in a Flying J truck stop at exit 77 in the middle of Illinois (where, disappointingly, we could not get any wifi signal)
I had to wait until we were rolling east on Interstate Route 80, 50 miles west of Chicago. I'm posted this from Big Red, barreling down the Interstate ~and don't worry, Art is driving at this point.
Our homeward journey will include a visit in Pennsylvania with an old friend I haven’t seen in 40 years. She happens to run a bed and breakfast in a handsome Victorian house, and I’ll report on this and other homeward bound adventures before we roll into Connecticut.
I want t to once again thank my faithful editor, Will Brady, for all his wonderful blog support [Awww, shucks! Twern't nothin' too much. Besides, it was fun!]. He has made this journaling effort a joy and the pictures sing and dance!
It seems somehow wrong that in about six hours she will whiz back across the state she just took seven days to peddle across in the other direction.
All around me are folks sorting their gear, loading up trucks, and making their goodbyes.
The Air Force Team, 50 riders all in sharp matching blue and black outfits, just road by me in tight formation to the tune of “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder.”
They are on their way to the finish line at the dipping spot, where front tires are bathed in Mississippi River water.
The Jefferson County Fairgrounds, where we came to rest in Fairfield, provided handy tractor drawn shuttles on flat beds with straw bales, showers in the hog building (I’m not kidding!), and congenial neighbors.
The county Cattlemen’s Association was our host for dinner….beef kabobs (no surprise there), noodles with beef stroganoff, really fresh string beans, and ice cream on a stick. It was lights out at 9:30, and even then, 5:30 AM came so soon.
I had to stop to let an Amish farmer with two handsome Belgians pulling his hay wagon pass by.
Little Keosauqua was ready for the onslaught. The Methodists, pie makers extraordinaire, had pocket pies (actually turnovers, but the title was intriguing) and home made cinnamon rolls. They sold out early.
Having packed off my riders for the last, 40 mile leg, I visited the historic 1840 county court house, ate my raspberry pocket pie, and headed back to Big Red.
While stowing my bicycle, I noticed that one of the roof hatches was askew, and a closer look revealed that it was actually about to fall off. This provided the day’s only drama.
I climbed smartly up the ladder next by the rear door, crawled across the roof, and tossed the hatch cover down ... no problem.
But then, backing over the roof edge, some twelve feet off the pavement, and finding the first rung of the ladder I couldn’t even see proved way too scary for usually intrepid me.
I was stuck on the roof of the camper on a back street in Keosauqua.
If a nice man wearing a Marines tee shirt hadn’t come along, I might be there still.
He kindly climbed up the ladder and helped my feet find the rungs. All in a day’s work for the Marines, I’m sure.
RAGBRAI 41 is now in the history books, and thousands of crazy cyclists must now go back to the real world.
All other images by Sue Merrow.
