July 5, 2008
Day 54: Cascade, IA to Elkader, IA
69.71 miles, 5:01:59 Ride Time, 13.85 Average Speed, 37.19 Maximum Speed
I was awake at 5:00, and was out of the tent by 5:30, when I saw that Jim, his tent, and his bike were already gone. He had told me he got an early start, but wow - the guy really had his act together.
I was riding out by 6:15, an early start by my standards. The scenery was reminiscent of home - farms, mostly, some unkempt with weeds growing along the fence rows and around the barns - The countryside didn't seem as neat as the last few days.
I caught up with Jim somewhere before the little town of Farley, talked with him briefly, then rode on - today, for whatever reason, I was interested, almost to the exlusion of everything else, in racking up the miles quickly.
The area around Dyersville (pop. 4,035) is the setting for the movie "Field of Dreams". It appears I'm one of only seven people in the world who has never seen the film, but I'm told that it involves a baseball diamond carved out of a cornfield. I must have passed near the field, because at one point I saw a sign reading "Thank You for Visiting the Field of Dreams - Open Daily 9 AM to 6 PM." Sorry, "Field of Dreams" fans - that's all I have to report.
Seven or eight miles out of Dyersville, I made a stop at a bar-and-grill in tiny Petersburg, where the locals hanging around seemed surprised when I ordered a fish sandwich and fries at 9:30 in the morning. While I ate my odd but satisfying breakfast, and talked to the bar's owner, an interesting guy, one of the other customers made the following comments:
1. I was going the wrong direction if I was trying to get to Washington.
2. The bridge down the road was out, and I would need to detour several miles on gravel to get around it.
3. It's an awful long way to Washington.
He also asked me the oldie-but-goodie: "How much do they pay you per mile?"
I soon left, and in a few miles found that, as I suspected, the bridge wasn't really "out", at least not for a bicycle. Colesburg (pop. 412) was another nice little town, memorable primarily for having a plethora of pop machines - there seemed to be one in front of almost every business. I had a Sunkist from one of them.
After Colesburg, I rode on a ridge for a while, and, still obsessively checking the bike computer this morning, noted that I had ridden 50 miles before 10:45. Then it was steep descent to Elkport, a climb back up, then another descent to Elkader (pop. 1,465), on the Turkey River.
It was barely 1:00, and I had ridden almost seventy miles, so I made a few calls to Marquette, about 30 miles away, to check on motels and campgrounds. I was surprised to find that the campgrounds were booked up, all but one of the motels was booked up, and the remaining rooms at that place were in the $100 range. What?!. Apparently Marquette is a tourist town - when I asked the smug guy at the one non-booked-up motel what the attraction was, he told me there were casinos nearby. Ugh - I wanted no part of that scene.
I decided to stay in Elkader, and first checked out the city park. Normally, this would have been fine - it's free, and there was a shower - but the Turkey River had flooded a month ago, and there was mud coating everything in the park. The whole place smelled horrible - what a shame.
There was one motel in Elkader, which was OK (but overpriced), so I checked in and then slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I was, somewhat inexplicably, in a bad mood - mostly because my plans for the day hadn't worked out, I suppose. I stayed in the room most of the day, not doing much of anything, except subjecting an innocent victim to my whining during a phone call.
Much later, I finally got out of the room, rode downtown, talked to some local people about the flooding that had taken place (it had beeen pretty bad), then had dinner on a picnic table outside the "Burger Barn", a local Dairy Queen-type place.
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Today's ride: 70 miles (113 km)
Total: 3,861 miles (6,214 km)
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