Photos from Elkader:
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| The welcome banner says life is good. |
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| Town tank - probably been photographed much. |
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| Entering Elkader Iowa |
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| A river runs through it. |
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| We ate at this middle eastern restaurant. Owner big Red Sox fan. |
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| Pata is happy about our food possibilities. |
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| Summer is tourist time for Elkader |
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| I'm taking a picture of Pata taking a picture of a Red Sox flag. |
Today
started early. We were on the road at
6:20 AM or so. It was surprisingly cool,
especially given how hot it was last night.
We headed out of Elkader and stopped on the way out of town to get me a
coffee. When we told the clerk where we
were going, she said emphatically there are some BIG hills on the way to Grand
Rapids. We sort of brushed her off,
hoping that her impression of big was smaller than the Berkshires.
We soon
learned that the hills of Iowa rival the Berkshires and we spent much of the
day climbing. The first road we were on
was State Route 13. It had little
shoulder and when it did, the shoulder was narrow with a rumble strip on the
left and gravel on the right. There was
also a lot of traffic and big rigs barreling down the narrow road. It was not much fun and rattled my nerves.
We got off
that road after about 9 miles or so and got mostly onto to county roads, which
also didn’t have a shoulder but were less traveled. Somewhere along the way, we were on another
road which had the rumble strip/gravel arrangement and I went off into the
gravel. My wheel sunk into the gravel
and caught the lip of the asphalt. I
fell over, but the panniers caught me and I unclipped and pushed the bike up
off the ground. I didn’t get hurt at
all, but I was scared and shaken. (This was
my first fall on the touring bike, and I was saved by fat panniers.)
We climbed
and climbed and it was hot too. The
descents were sort of fun – but with no shoulder I worried about trucks needing
to pass us. Luckily there weren’t too
many of them that caught us on the downhill.
At one
point, David was ahead of me and we had just crested a climb, when I hear
barking. Out of the woods, come a pack
of eight or so dogs. They are in hot
pursuit of David, I am watching him yell at them and trying to veer to the left
to separate the pack and wondering what the hell I am going to do as I am
riding behind them and right into the fray.
As all of this is happening a red car comes up on the other side and
breaks up the pack of dogs. The driver
slowed down and stopped in the middle of the pack. The dogs seemed confused which allowed me to
pass and David to follow. The car showed
up at exactly the right moment – another case of the Universe watching out for
us.
Once we got
past the dogs, we did some more climbing and made it to Lansing where we
stopped at an ice cream store and had the best chocolate shake ever! A nice reward for such a hard day.
DW The dogs had the tactical advantages of
surprise and location. I could hear barking behind the thick trees and bushes
but couldn’t see anything. The dogs were right at the top of a very long difficult
climb and they poured out into the road as soon as I got to the top. They were
Australian dingo dogs and they quickly surrounded me. I tried to steer the lead
(alpha dog?) into the shoulder and preempt his advantage – that’s when the
miracle car appeared coming from the opposite direction. The driver could see
my difficulty (I was in his lane trying to manage my stability and forward
motion) so he slowed and divided the pack which confused them greatly and
allowed Pata to continue forward. I had stopped and turned back to help her
negotiate the canine calamity but the sharp driver shut down their game with his
shrewd driving. The dogs galloped back into the bushes and we went on.
The climbing
was unbelievably difficult! Heat and height seemed to converge at the same
time. We crawled up the grades at 3 mph sweating profusely. Towards the top of
one particularly difficult climb I started having visions…of food! I knew I was
bonking. My synapses weren’t firing properly and my heart was beating like some
distant bass speaker buried in my chest. It was high noon hot, hot like a sweat
lodge or sauna with no exit. But we survived each and every one of those climbs
just as we did the Berkshire Mountains in New York. And that is a wonderful
feeling of accomplishment to outlast such pain.
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| Train is moving and nearly a mile long. |
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| The rolling hills of Iowa...not much shoulder for us on the roads. |
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| Massive energy plant on the Mississippi River. |
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| Hundreds of summer homes and docks line the river. |
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| Beautiful views everywhere on the river. |
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| Pata cruises along - she's very strong on the bike! |
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| Nearly in Lansing. |
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| When it's this hot outside we need ice cream. |
