Day 21 Lamoni, IA

June 6, 2018

We made it to Iowa today. It was a long ride with almost 2000 feet of climbing, but we had nice scenery and good roads.

We passed a number of tractors driving down the road today

That's Team A way ahead of us - their usual position

We rode past a huge field where all the corn was dead. That's the first time we've seen that

We only had two places with services we could stop today. The first one was in the little community of Gilman City. At the convenience store there, we got into a long conversation with an elderly overall-clad farmer whose family had farmed there for four generations. After listening to him talk about his long farming life in rural Missouri, it seemed surprising to hear a cell phone ring and have him pull out his I-phone out of his overalls.

The second available stop was twenty miles up the road in Ridgeway. When we got there, we were very discouraged to learn that the only place in town had burned last week. That all turned out well, as you'll read in Alain's post.

There are massive grain elevators every few miles

This old brick elevator was on a farm next to the big modern facility

We got to Iowa just a few miles before the end of today's ride. We were on a small farm road and there was no Iowa state line sign. After many, many pictures of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri corn and beans, I'm sure you can't wait for your first view of Iowa corn and beans. Shortly before we left on this trip, I read that there were four types of scenery in Iowa. There is corn on the left and beans on the right, beans on the left and corn on the right, corn on both sides and beans on both sides. I'm sure we will get lots of views of all four of those types of scenes.

Today's ride: 60 miles (97 km)
Total: 981 miles (1,579 km)

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